'How very hard it is to be a Christian?'
Sometimes I can't help laughing to think that there was a time when I thought the teaching of Christ unpractical! Do you mind ringing the bell for me; the others will be in directly, and will be glad of tea after that headachy place.”
“Is there nothing else I can do for you?” asked Brian.
“Yes, one thing more help me to remember the levers of the second order. It's my physiology class tonight, and I feel, as Tom would express it, like a 'boiled owl.'”
“Let me take the class for you.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” she replied. “I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
It was not till Brian had left that Erica, taking up the article on cremation, was struck by some resemblance in the handwriting. She must have seen Brian's writing before, but only this afternoon did she make that fresh discovery. Crossing the room she took from one of the book shelves a dark blue morocco volume, and compared the writing on the fly leaf with her MS.
“From another admirer of 'Hiawatha.'” There could be no doubt that Brian had written that. Had he cared for her so long? Had he indeed loved her all these years? She was interrupted by the maid bringing in the tea.
“Mr. Bircham's boy is here, miss, and if you please, can cook speak to you a minute?”
Erica put down the Longfellow and rolled up “Cremation.”
“I'm sure she's going to give warning!” she thought to herself. “What a day to choose for it! That's what I call an anti-climax.”
Her forebodings proved all too true. In a minute more in walked the cook, with the sort of conscious dignity of bearing which means “I am no longer in your service.”
“If you please, miss, I wish to leave this day month.”
“I shall be sorry to lose you,” said Erica; “what are your reasons for leaving?”
“I've not been used, miss, to families as is in the law courts. I've been used to the best West End private families.”
“I don't see how it can affect you,” said Erica, feeling, in spite of her annoyance, much inclined to laugh.
“Indeed, miss, and it do. There's not a tradesman's boy but has his joke or his word about Mr. Raeburn,” said the cook in an injured voice. “And last Sunday when I went to the minister to show my lines, he said a member ought to be ashamed to take service with a hatheist and that I was in an 'ouse of 'ell. Those was his very words, miss, an 'ouse of 'ell, he said.”
“Then it was exceedingly impertinent of him,” said Erica, “for he knew nothing whatever about it.”
After that there was nothing for it but to accept the resignation, and to begin once more the weary search for that rara avis, “a good plain cook.”
Her interview had only just ended when she heard the front door open.She listened intently, but apparently it was only Tom; he came upstairssinging a refrain with which just then she quite agreed:“LAW, law Rhymes very well with jaw,If you're fond of litigation,And sweet procrastination,Latin and botheration,I advise you to go to law.”
“Halloo!” he exclaimed. “So you did get home all right? I like your way of acting Casabianca! The chieftain sent me tearing out after you, and when I got there, you had vanished!”
“Brian came up just then,” said Erica, “and I thought it better not to wait. Oh, here comes father.”
Raeburn entered as she spoke. No one who saw him would have guessed that he was an overworked, overworried man, for his face was a singularly peaceful one, serene with the serenity of a strong nature convinced of its own integrity.
“Got some tea for us, Eric?” he asked, throwing himself back in a chair beside the fire.
Some shade of trouble in her face, invisible to any eye but that of a parent, made him watch her intently, while a new hope which made his heart beat more quickly sprang up within him. Christians had not shown up well that day; prosecuting and persecuting Christians are the most repulsive beings on earth! Did she begin to feel a flaw in the system she had professed belief in? Might she by this injustice come to realize that she had unconsciously cheated herself into a belief? If such things might win her back to him, might bridge over that miserable gulf between them, then welcome any trouble, any persecution, welcome even ruin itself.
But had he been able to see into Erica's heart, he would have learned that the grief which had left its traces on her face was the grief of knowing that such days as these strengthened and confirmed him in his atheism. Erica was indeed ever confronted with one of the most baffling of all baffling mysteries. How was it that a man of such grand capacities, a man with so many noble qualities, yet remained in the darkness? One day she put that question sadly enough to Charles Osmond.
“Not darkness, child, none of your honest secularists who live up to their creed are in darkness,” he replied. “However mistakenly, they do try to promote what they consider the general good. Were you in such absolute blackness before last summer?”
“There was the love of Humanity,” said Erica musingly.
“Yes, and what is that but a ray of the light of life promised to all who, to any extent, follow Christ? It is only the absolutely selfish who are in the black shadow. The honest atheist is in the penumbra, and in his twilight sees a little bit of the true sun, though he calls it Humanity instead of Christ.”
“Oh, if the shadows would but go!” exclaimed Erica.
“Would!” he said, laughing gently. “Why, child, they will, they must!”
“But now, I mean! 'Here down,' as Mazzini would have said.”
“You were ever an impatient little mortal.”
“How can one help being impatient for this,” she said with a quick sigh.
“That is what I used to say myself seven years ago over you,” he said smiling. “But I learned that the Father knew best, and that if we would work with Him we must wait with Him too. You musn't waste your strength in impatience, child, you need every bit of it for the life before you.”
But patience did not come by nature to a Raeburn, and Erica did not gain it in a day even by grace.
And yet, because I love thee, I obtainFrom that same love this vindicating grace,To live on still in love, and yet in vain,To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face. E. B. Browning.
Much has been said and written about the monotony of unalloyed pleasure, and the necessity of shadows and dark places in life as well as in pictured landscape. And certainly there can be but few in this world of stern realities who would dispute the fact that pleasure is doubled by its contrast with preceding pain. Perhaps it was the vividness of this contrast that made Raeburn and Erica enjoy, with a perfect rapture of enjoyment, a beautiful view and a beautiful spring day in Italy. Behind them lay a very sombre past; they had escaped for a brief moment from the atmosphere of strife, from the world of controversy, from the scorching breath of slander, from the baleful influences of persecution and injustice. Before them lay the fairest of all the cities of Italy. They were sitting in the Boboli gardens, and from wooded heights looked down upon that loveliest of Italian valleys.
The silver Arno wound its way between the green encircling hills; then between the old houses of Florence, its waters spanned now by a light suspension bridge token of modern times now by old brown arches strengthened and restored, now by the most venerable looking of all the bridges, the Ponte Vecchio, with its double row of little shops. Into the cloudless blue sky rose the pinnacles of Santa Croce, the domes of San Spirito, of the Baptistery, of the Cathedral; sharply defined in the clear atmosphere were the airy, light Campanile of Giotto, the more slender brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the spire of Santa Maria Novella. Northward beyond the city rose the heights of Fiesole, and to the east the green hills dotted all over with white houses, swept away into the unseen distance.
Raeburn had been selected as the English delegate to attend a certain political gathering held that year at Florence. He had at first hesitated to accept the post for his work at home had enormously increased; but the long months of wearing anxiety had so told upon him that his friends had at length persuaded him to go, fully aware that the only chance of inducing him to take any rest was to get him out of the region of work.
The “Miracles” trial was at length over, but Mr. Pogson had not obtained the desire of his heart, namely, the imprisonment and fining of Luke Raeburn. The only results of the trial were the extensive advertisement of the pamphlet in question, a great increase of bitterness on each side, and a great waste of money. Erica's sole consolation lay in the fact that a few of the more liberal thinkers were beginning to see the evil and to agitate for a repeal of the Blasphemy Laws. As for the action for libel, there was no chance of its coming on before June, and in the meantime Mr. Pogson's letter was obtaining a wider circulation, and perhaps, on the whole, Luke Raeburn was just at that time the best-abused man in all England.
There had been a long silence between the father and daughter who understood each other far too well to need many words at such a time; but at length a sudden ejaculation from Raeburn made Erica turn her eye from Fiesole to the shady walk in the garden down which he was looking.
“Does any Italian walk at such a pace?” he exclaimed. “That must surely be Brian Osmond or his double in the shape of an English tourist.”
“Oh, impossible!” said Erica, coloring a little and looking intently at the pedestrian who was still at some little distance.
“But it is,” said Raeburn “height, way of walking, everything! My dear Eric, don't tell me I can't recognize the man who saved my life. I should know him a mile off!”
“What can have brought him here?” said Erica, a certain joyous tumult in her heart checked by the dread of evil tidings a dread which was but natural to one who had lived her life.
“Come and meet him,” said Raeburn. “Ha, Brian, I recognized you ever so far off, and couldn't persuade this child of your identity.”
Brian, a little flushed with quick walking, looked into Erica's face searchingly, and was satisfied with what he read there satisfied with the soft glow of color that came to her cheeks, and with the bright look of happiness that came into her eyes which, as a rule, were grave, and when in repose even sad in expression.
“I owe this to a most considerate patient who thought fit to be taken ill at Genoa and to telegraph for me,” he said in explanation; “and being in Italy, I thought I might as well take my yearly outing now.”
“Capital idea!” said Raeburn. “You are the very man we wanted. What with the meetings and interviews, I don't get much peace even here, and Erica is much in need of an escort sometimes. How did you find us?”
“They told me at the hotel that I should probably find you here, though, if I had known what a wilderness of a place it is I should have been rather hopeless.”
Erica left most of the talking to her father; just then she felt no wish to put a single thought into words. She wanted only to enjoy the blissful dream-like happiness which was so new, and rare, and wonderful that it brought with it the feeling that any very definite thought or word must bring it to an end. Perfect harmony with your surroundings. Yes, that was indeed a very true definition of happiness; and of late the surroundings had been so grim and stormy. She seemed to tread upon air as they roamed about the lovely walks. The long, green vistas were to her a veritable paradise. Her father looked so happy, too, and had so entirely shaken off his cares, and Brian, who was usually rather silent, seemed today a perfect fountain of talk.
Since that December day in Westminster Hall a great change had come over Erica. Not a soul besides Brian and herself knew anything about the scene with Sir Algernon Wyte. Not a word had passed between them since upon the subject; but perhaps because of the silence, that day was all the more in the thoughts of each. The revelation of Brian's love revealed also to Erica much in his character which had hitherto perplexed her simply because she had not seen it in the true light. There had always been about him a wistfulness bordering on sadness which had sometimes almost angered her. For so little do even intimate friends know each other, that lives, which seem all peaceful and full of everything calculated to bring happiness, are often the ones which are preyed upon by some grievous trouble or anxiety unknown to any outsider. If he had indeed loved her all those seven years he must have suffered fearfully. What the suffering had been Erica could, from her present position, understand well enough. The thought of it touched her inexpressibly, seemed to her, as indeed it was, the shadow of that Divine Love which had loved her eternally had waited for her through long years had served her and shielded her, though she never recognized its existence till at length, in one flash of light, the revelation had come to her, and she had learned the glory of Love, the murky gloom of those past misunderstandings.
Those were wonderful days that they spent together at Florence, the sort of days that come but once in a life time; for the joy of dawn is quite distinct from the bright noon day or the calm evening, distinct, too, from that second and grander dawn which awaits us in the Unseen when the night of life is over. Together they wandered through the long corridors of the Uffizzi; together they returned again and again to the Tribune, or traversed that interminable passage across the river which leads to the Pitti Gallery, or roamed about among the old squares and palaces which are haunted by so many memories. And every day Brian meant to speak, but could not because the peace, and restfulness, and glamour of the present was so perfect, and perhaps because, unconsciously, he felt that these were “halcyon days.”
On Sunday he made up his mind that he certainly would speak before the day was over. He went with Erica to see the old monastery of San Marco before morning service at the English church. But, though they were alone together, he could not bring himself to speak there. They wandered from cell to cell, looking at those wonderful frescoes of the Crucifixion in each of which Fra Angelico seemed to gain some fresh thought, some new view of his inexhaustible subject. And Brian, watching Erica, thought how that old master would have delighted in the pure face and perfect coloring, in the short auburn hair which was in itself a halo, but could not somehow just then draw her thoughts away from the frescoes. Together they stood in the little cells occupied once by Savonarola; looked at the strange, stern face which Bastianini chiseled so effectively; stood by the old wooden desk where Savonarola had written and read, saying very little to one another, but each conscious that the silence was one of perfect understanding and sympathy. Then came the service in a hideous church, which yet seemed beautiful to them, with indifferent singing, which was somehow sweeter to them than the singing of a trained choir elsewhere.
But, on returning to the hotel, Brian found that his chances for that day were over for all the afternoon Erica had to receive a constant succession of visitors who, as she said, turned her father for the time being into the “British lion.” In the evening, too, when they walked in the Cascine, they were no longer alone. Raeburn went with then, and as they paced along the broad avenue with the Arno gleaming through the fresh green of the trees, talking of the discussions of the past week, he inadvertently touched the note of pain in an otherwise cloudless day.
“The work is practically over now,” he said. “But I think I must take a day or two to see a little of Florence. I must be at Salsburg to meet Hasenbalg by Wednesday week. Can you be ready to leave here on Wednesday, Eric?”
“Oh, yes, father,” she said without hesitation or comment but with something in her voice which told Brian that she, too, felt a pang of regret at the thought that their days in that city of golden dreams were so soon to be ended.
The Monday morning, however, proved so perfect a day that it dispelled the shadow that had fallen on them. Raeburn wished to go to Fiesole, and early in the morning Brian, having secured a carriage and settled the terms with the crafty-looking Italian driver, they set off together. The sunny streets looked sunnier than ever; the Tornabuoni was as usual lively and bustling; the flower market at the base of the Palazza Strozzi was gay with pinks and carnations and early roses. They drove out of the city, passed innumerable villas, out into the open country where the only blot upon the fair landscape was a funeral train, the coffin borne by those gruesome beings, the Brothers of the Misericordia, with their black robes and black face cloths pierced only with holes for the eyes.
“Is it necessary to make death so repulsive?” said Raeburn. “Our own black hearses are bad enough, but upon my word, I should be sorry to be carried to my grave by such grim beings!”
He took off his hat, however, as they passed, and that not merely out of deference to the custom of the country but because of the deep reverence with which he invariably regarded the dead a reverence which in his own country was marked by the involuntary softening of his voice when he alluded to the death of others, the token of a nature which, though strangely twisted, was in truth deeply reverential.
Then began the long ascent, the road, as usual, being lined with beggars who importunately followed the carriage; while, no sooner had they reached the village itself than they were besieged by at least a dozen women selling the straw baskets which are the specialty of Fiesole.
“Ecco, signor! Ecco signorina! Vary sheep! Vary sheep!” resounded on all sides, each vendor thrusting her wares forward so that progress was impossible.
“What a plague this is!” said Raeburn. “They'll never leave you in peace, Erica; they are too well used to the soft hearted signorina Inglese.”
“Well, then, I shall leave you to settle them,” said Erica, laughing, “and see if I can't sketch a little in the amphitheatre. They can't torment us there because there is an entrance fee.”
“All right, and I will try this bird's eye view of Florence,” said Raeburn, establishing himself upon the seat which stands on the verge of the hill looking southward. He was very fond of making pen-and-ink sketches, and by his determined, though perfectly courteous manner, he at last succeeded in dismissing the basket women.
Erica and Brian, in the meantime, walked down the steep little path which leads back to the village, on their way encountering a second procession of Brothers bearing a coffin. In a few minutes they had found their way to a quiet garden at the remote end of which, far from the houses of Fiesole and sheltered on all sides by the green Apennines, was an old Roman amphitheatre. Grass and flowers had sprung up now on the arena where in olden times had been fearful struggles between men and beasts. Wild roses and honeysuckle drooped over the gray old building, and in between the great blocks of stone which formed the tiers of seats for the spectators sprung the yellow celandine and the white star of Bethlehem.
Erica sat down upon one of the stony seats and began to sketch the outline of the hills and roughly to draw in the foreground the further side of the amphitheatre and broken column which lay in the middle.
“Would you mind fetching me some water?” she said to Brian.
There was a little trickling stream close by, half hidden by bramble bushes. Brian filled her glass and watched her brush as she washed in the sky.
“Is that too blue, do you think?” she asked, glancing up at him with one of her bright looks.
“Nothing could be too deep for such a sky as this,” he replied, half absently. Then, with a sudden change of tone, “Erica, do you remember the first day you spoke to me?”
“Under murky London skies very unlike these,” she said, laughing a little, but nervously. “You mean the day when our umbrellas collided!”
“You mustn't abuse the murky skies,” said Brian, smiling. “If the sun had been shining, the collision would never have occurred. Oh, Erica! What a life time it seems since that day in Gower Street! I little thought then that I should have to wait more than seven years to tell you of my love, or that at last I should tell you in a Roman amphitheatre under these blue skies. Erica, I think you have known it of late. Have you, my darling? Have you known how I loved you?”
“Yes,” she said, looking down at her sketch book with glowing cheeks.
“Oh! If you knew what a paradise of hope you opened to me that day last December and how different life has been ever since! Those were gray years, Erica, when I dared not even hope to gain your love. But lately, darling, I have hoped. Was I wrong?”
“No,” she said with a little quiver in her voice.
“You will love me?”
She looked up at him for a moment in silence, a glorious light in her eyes, her whole face radiant with joy.
“I do love you,” she said softly.
He drew nearer to her, held both her hands in his, waiting only for the promise which would make her indeed his own.
“Will you be my wife, darling?”
But the words had scarcely passed his lips when a look of anguish swept over Erica's face; she snatched away her hands.
“Oh! God help me!” she cried. “What have I done? I've been living in a dream! It's impossible, Brian! Impossible!”
A gray look came over Brian's face.
“How impossible?” he asked in a choked voice.
“I can't leave home,” she said, clasping her hands tightly together. “I never can leave my father.”
“I will wait,” said Brian, recovering his voice. “I will wait any time for you only give me hope.”
“I can't,” she sobbed. “I daren't!”
“But you have given it me!” he exclaimed. “You have said you loved me!”
“I do! I do!” she cried passionately. “But, oh, Brian! Have pity on me don't make me say it again I must not think of it I can never be your wife.”
Her words were broken with sobs which she could not restrain.
“My darling,” he said growing calm and strong again at the sight of her agitation, and once more possessing himself of her hand, “you have had a great many troubles lately, and I can quite understand that just now you could not leave your father. But I will wait till less troubled times; then surely you will come to me?”
“No,” she said quickly as if not daring to pause, “It will always be the same; there never will be quiet times for us. I can't leave my father. It isn't as if he had other children I am the only one, and must stay.”
“Is this then to be the end of it all?” cried Brian. “My darling, you can not be so cruel to me. It can not be the end there is no end to love and we know that we love each other. Erica, give me some future to look to some hope.”
The terrible pain expressed in every line of his face wrung her heart.
“Oh, wait,” she exclaimed. “Give me one moment to think.”
She buried her face in her hands, shutting out the sunny Italian landscape, the very beauty of which seemed to weaken her powers of endurance. Truly she had been living lately in a golden dream, and the waking was anguish. Oh, if she had but realized before the meaning of it all, then she would have hidden her love so that he never would have guessed it. She would have been to him the Erica of a year ago, just a friend and nothing more. But now she must give him the worst of pain, perhaps ruin his whole life. If she might but give him some promise. What was the right? How were love and duty to be reconciled?
As she sat crouched up in her misery, fighting the hardest battle of her life, the bell in the campanile of the village church began to ring. It was twelve o'clock. All through the land, in remembrance of the hour when the true meaning of love and sacrifice was revealed to the human race, there swept now the music of church bells, bidding the people to pause in their work and pray. Many a peasant raised his thoughts for a moment from sordid cares or hard labor, and realized that there was an unseen world. And here in the Roman amphitheatre, where a conflict more painful than those physical conflicts of old time was going on, a soul prayed in agony for the wisdom to see the right and the strength to do it.
When at length Erica lifted her face she found that Brian was no longer beside her, he was pacing to and fro in the arena; waiting had grown unbearable to him. She went down to him, moving neither quickly nor hurriedly, but at the steady “right onward” pace which suited her whole aspect.
“Brian,” she said in a low voice, “do you remember telling me that day that I must try to show them what the Father is? You must help me now, not hinder. You will help me just because you do indeed love me?”
“You will give me no promise even for the most distant future?”
“I can't,” she replied, faltering a little as she saw him turn deadly white. “If there were any engagement between us, I should have to tell my father of it; and that would only make our trouble his and defeat my whole object. Oh, Brian, forgive me, and just leave me. I can have given you nothing but pain all these years. Don't let me spoil your whole life!”
His face caught something of the noble purpose which made hers shine in spite of the sadness.
“Darling,” he said quickly, “I can thank God for you though you are never to be mine. God bless you, Erica.”
There was a moment's pause; he still kept her hands in his.
“Tell your father I've gone for a walk over to those hills that I shall not be home till evening.” He felt her hands tremble, and knew that he only tortured her by staying. “Will you kiss me once, Erica?” he said.
She lifted a pale steadfast face and quivering lips to his, and after that one long embrace they parted. When he turned away Erica stood quite still for a minute in the arena listening to his retreating footsteps. Her heart, which had throbbed painfully, seemed now only to echo his steps, to beat more faintly as they grew less audible. At last came silence, and then she crept up to the place where she had left her sketch book and paint box.
The whole world seemed sliding away aching desolation overwhelmed her. Brian's face with its passion and pain rose before her dry, burning eyes. Then darkness came, blotting out the sunshine; the little stream trickling into its stony basin seemed to grow into a roaring cataract, the waters to rush into her ears with a horrid gurgling; while the stones of the amphitheatre seemed to change into blocks of ice and to freeze her as she lay.
A few minutes later she gasped her way painfully back to life. All was very peaceful now; the water fell with its soft tinkling sound, there was a low hum of insects; beside her stony pillow grew some stars of Bethlehem, and in between their delicate white and green she could see the arena and the tiers of seats opposite, and out beyond the green encircling hills. Golden sunshine lighted up the dark pines and spirelike cypresses; in the distance there was an olive garden, its soft, gray-green foliage touched into silvery brightness.
The beauty of the scene, which in her struggle had seemed to weaken and unnerve her, stole now into her heart and comforted her; and all the time there rang in her ears the message that the bells had brought her “Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.”
“Taking a siesta?” said a voice above her. She looked up and saw her father.
“I've rather a headache,” she replied.
“Enough to give you one, my child, to lie there in the sun without an umbrella,” he said, putting up his own to shelter her. “Such a May noonday in Italy might give you a sunstroke. What was your doctor thinking of to allow it?”
“Brian? Oh, he has gone over to those hills; we are not to wait for him, he wanted a walk.”
“Quite right,” said Raeburn. “I don't think he ought to waste his holiday in Italian cities, he wants fresh air and exercise after his London life. Where's your handkerchief?”
He took it to the little stream, put aside the overhanging bushes, dipped it in the water, and bringing it back laid it on her burning forehead.
“How you spoil me, PADRE MIO,” she said with a little laugh that was sadder than tears; and as she spoke she slipped down to a lower step and rested her head on his knee, drawing down one of his strong hands to shade her eyes. He talked of his sketch, of his word-skirmish with the basket women, of the view from the amphitheatre; but she did not much hear what he said, she was looking at the hand that shaded her eyes. That strong hand which had toiled for her when she was a helpless baby, the hand to which she had clung when every out her support had been wrenched away by death, the hand which she had held in hers when she thought he was dying, and the children had sung of “Life's long day and death's dark night.”
All at once she drew it down and pressed it to her lips with a child's loving reverence. Then she sat up with a sudden return of energy.
“There, now, let us go home,” she exclaimed. “My head aches a little still, but we won't let it spoil our last day but one in Florence. Didn't we talk of San Miniato for this afternoon?”
It was something of a relief to find, on returning, an invitation to dinner for that evening which Raeburn could not well refuse. Erica kept up bravely through the afternoon, but when she was once more alone her physical powers gave way. She was lying on her bed sick and faint and weary, and with the peculiarly desolate feeling which comes to most people when they are ill in a hotel with all the unheeding bustle going on around them. Then came a knock at her door.
“Entrate,” she said quickly, welcoming any fresh voice which would divert her mind from the weary longing for her mother. A sort of wild hope sprung up within her that some woman friend would be sent to her, that Gladys Farrant, or old Mrs. Osmond, or her secularist friend Mrs. MacNaughton, whom she loved best of all, would suddenly find themselves in Florence and come to her in her need.
There entered a tall, overworked waiter. He looked first at her, then at the note in his hand, spelling out the direction with a puzzled face.
“Mess Rabi Rabi Rabi Rabi an?” he asked hesitatingly.
“Grazie,” she replied, almost snatching it from him. The color rushed to her cheeks as she saw the writing was Brian's, and the instant the waiter had closed the door she tore open the envelope with trembling hands.
It was a last appeal, written after he had returned from wandering among the Apennines, worn out in body and shaken from the noble fortitude of the morning. The strong passionate words woke an answering thrill in Erica's heart. He asked her to think it all over once more, he had gone away too hastily. If she could change her mind, could see any possible hope for the future, would she write to him? If he heard nothing from her, he would understand what the silence meant. This was in brief the substance of the letter, but the words had a passionate, unrestrained intensity which showed they had been written by a man of strong nature overwrought by suffering and excitement.
He was here, in the very hotel. Might she not write to him? Might she not send him some sort of message write just a word of indefinite hope which would comfort and relieve herself as well as him? “If I do not hear from you, I shall understand what your silence means.” Ah! But would he understand? What had she said this morning to him? Scarcely anything the merest broken bits of sentences, the poorest, coldest confession of love.
Her writing case lay open on the table beside the bed with an unfinished letter to Aunt Jean, begun before they had started for Fiesole. She snatched up paper and pen, and trembling so much that she could scarcely support herself she wrote two brief lines.
“Darling, I love you, and always must love you, first and best.”
Then she lay back again exhausted, looking at the poor little weak words which would not contain a thousandth part of the love in heart. Yet, though the words were true, would they perhaps convey a wrong meaning to him? Ought she to send them? On the other hand would he indeed understand the silence the silence which seemed now intolerable to her? She folded the note and directed it, the tumult in her heart growing wilder as she did so. Once more there raged the battle which she had fought in the amphitheatre that morning, and she was not so strong now; she was weakened by physical pain, and to endure was far harder. It seemed to her that her whole life would be unbearable if she did not send him that message. And to send it was so fatally easy; she had merely to ring, and then in a few minutes the note would be in his hands.
It was a little narrow slip of a room; all her life long she could vividly recall it. The single bed pushed close to the wall, the writing table with its gay-patterned cloth, the hanging wardrobe with glass doors, the walls trellised with roses, and on the ceiling a painting of some white swans eternally swimming in an ultra-marine lake. The window, unshuttered, but veiled by muslin curtains, looked out upon the Arno; from her bed she could see the lights on the further bank. On the wall close beside her was a little round wooden projection. If it had been a rattlesnake she could not have gazed at it more fixedly. Then she looked at the printed card above, and the words written in French and English, German, and Italian, seemed to fall mechanically on her brain, though burning thoughts seethed there, too.
“Ring once for hot water, twice for the chamber maid, three times for the waiter.”
Merely to touch that ivory knob, and then by the lightest pressure of the finger tips a whole world of love and happiness and rest might open for her, and life would be changed forever.
Again and again she was on the point of yielding, but each time she resisted, and each resistance made her stronger. At length, with a fearful effort, she turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, clinging with all her might to the ironwork of the bed.
For at least an hour the most frightful hour of her life she did not dare to stir. At last when her hands were stiff and sore with that rigid grasping, when it seemed as if her heart had been wrenched out of her and had left nothing but an aching void, she sat up and tore both Brian's note and her reply into a thousand pieces; then, in a weary, lifeless way, made her preparations for the night.
But sleep was impossible. The struggle was over forever, but the pain was but just begun, and she was still a young girl with the best part of her life stretching out before her. She did not toss about restlessly, but lay very still, just enduring her misery, while all the every-day sounds came to her from without laughter in the next room from two talkative American girls, doors opening and shutting, boots thrown down, electric bells rung, presently her father's step and voice.
“Has Miss Raeburn been up long?”
“Sairtenlee, sair, yes,” replied the English-speaking waiter. “The signorina sleeps, doubtless.”
Then came a pause, and in another minute her father's door was closed and locked.
Noisy parties of men shouting out some chorus sung at one of the theatres passed along the Lung' Arno, and twanging mandolins wandered up and down in the moonlight. The sound of that harshest and most jarring of all musical instruments was every after hateful to her. She could not hear one played without a shudder.
Slowly and wearily the night wore on. Sometimes she stole to the window, and looked out on the sleeping city, on the peaceful Arno which was bathed in silvery moonlight, and on the old, irregular houses, thinking what struggles and agonies this place had witnessed in past times, and realizing what an infinitesimal bit of the world's sufferings she was called to bear. Sometimes she lighted a candle and read, sometimes prayed, but for the most part just lay still, silently enduring, learning, though she did not think it, the true meaning of pain.
Somewhat later than usual she joined her father the next morning in the coffee room.
“Brian tells me he is off today,” was Raeburn's greeting. “It seems that he must see that patient at Genoa again, and he wants to get a clear fortnight in Switzerland.”
“Is it nor rather early for Switzerland?”
“I should have thought so, but he knows more about it than I do. He has written to try to persuade your friend, Mr. Farrant, to join him in the Whitsuntide recess.”
“Oh, I am glad of that,” said Erica, greatly relieved.
Directly after breakfast she went out with her father, going first of all to French's bank, where Raeburn had to change a circular note.
“It is upstairs,” he said as they reached the house. “Don't you trouble to come up; you'll have stairs enough presently at the Uffizzi.”
“Very well,” she replied, “I will wait for you here.”
She stood in the doorway looking out thoughtfully at the busy Tornabuoni and its gay shops; but in a minute a step she knew sounded on the staircase, and the color rushed to her cheeks.
“I have just said goodbye to your father,” said Brian. “I am leaving Florence this morning. You must forgive me for having written last night. I ought not to have done it, and I understood your silence.”
He spoke calmly, in the repressed voice of a man who holds “passion in a leash.” Erica was thankful to have the last sight of him thus calm and strong and self-restrained. It was a nobler side of love than that which had inspired his letter nobler because freer from thought of self.
“I am so glad you will have Donovan,” she said. “Goodbye.”
He took her hand in his, pressed it, and turned away without a word.
Therefore my Hope aroseFrom out her swound and gazed upon Thy face.And, meeting there that soft subduing lookWhich Peter's spirit shookSunk downward in a rapture to embraceThy pierced hands and feet with kisses close,And prayed Thee to assist her evermoreTo “reach the things before.” E. B. Browning
“I'm really thankful it is the last time I shall have to get this abominable paper money,” said Raeburn, coming down the stairs. “Just count these twos and fives for me, dear; fifteen of each there should be.”
At that moment Brian had just passed the tall, white column disappearing into the street which leads to the Borgo Ogni Santi. Erica turned to begin her new chapter of life heavily handicapped in the race for once more that deadly faintness crept over her, a numbing, stifling pressure, as if Pain in physical form had seized her heart in his cold clasp. But with all her strength she fought against it, forcing herself to count the hateful little bits of paper, and thankful that her father was too much taken up with the arrangement of his purse to notice her.
“I am glad we happened to meet Brian,” he remarked; “he goes by an earlier train that I thought. Now, little son Eric, where shall we go? We'll have a day of unmitigated pleasure and throw care to the winds. I'll even forswear Vieusseux; there won't be much news today.”
“Let us take the Pitti Palace first,” said Erica, knowing that the fresh air and the walk would be the only chance for her.
She walked very quickly with the feeling that, if she were still for a single moment, she should fall down. And, luckily, Raeburn thought her paleness accounted for by yesterday's headache and the wakeful night, and never suspected the true state of the case. On they went, past fascinating marble shops and jewelers' windows filled with Florentine mosaics, across the Ponte Vecchio, down a shady street, and into the rough-hewn, grim-looking palace. It was to Erica like a dream of pain, the surroundings were so lovely, the sunshine so perfect, and her own heart so sore.
But within that old palace she found the true cure for sore hearts. She remembered having looked with Brian at an “Ecce Home,” by Carlo Dolci and thought she would like to see it again. It was not a picture her father would have cared for, and she left him looking at Raphael's “Three Ages of Man,” and went by herself into the little room which is called the “Hall of Ulysses.” The picture was a small one and had what are considered the usual faults of the painter, but it was the first “Ecce Homo” that Erica had ever cared for; and, whatever the shortcomings of the execution, the ideal was a most beautiful one. The traces of physical pain were not brought into undue prominence, appearing not at all in the face, which was full of unutterable calm and dignity. The deep, brown eyes had the strange power which belongs to some pictures; they followed you all over the room there was no escaping them. They were hauntingly sad eyes, eyes in which there lurked grief unspeakable; not the grief which attends bodily pain, but the grief which grieves for others the grief which grieves for humanity, for its thousand ills and ignorances, its doubts and denials, its sins and sufferings. There was no bitterness in it, no restlessness, no questioning. It was the grief of a noble strong man whose heart is torn by the thought of the sin and misery of his brothers, but who knows that the Father can, and will, turn the evil into the means of glorious gain.
As Erica looked, the true meaning of pain seemed to flash upon her. Dimly she had apprehended it in the days of her atheism, had clung to the hope that the pain of the few brought the gain of the many; but now the hope became certainty, the faith became open vision. For was it not all here, written in clearest characters, in the life of the Ideal Man? And is not what was true for him, true for us too? We talk much about “Christ our example,” and struggle painfully along the uphill road of the “Imitation of Christ,” meaning by that too often a vague endeavor to be “good,” to be patient, to be not entirely absorbed in the things which are seen. But when pain comes, when the immense misery and evil in the world are borne in upon us, we too often stumble, or fail utterly, just because we do not understand our sonship; because we forget that Christians must be sin-bearers like their Master, pain bearers like their Master; because we will let ourselves be blinded by the mystery of evil and the mystery of pain, instead of fixing our eyes as Christ did, on the joy that those mysteries are sure to bring. “Lo, I come to do Thy will.” And what is the will of even a good earthly father but the best possible for all his children?
Erica saw for the first time that no pain she had ever suffered had been a wasted thing, nor had it merely taught her personally some needful lesson; it had been rather her allotted service, her share of pain-bearing, sin-bearing, Christ-following; her opportunity of doing the “Will” not self-chosen, but given to her as one of the best of gifts by the Father Himself.
“Oh, what a little fool I've been!” she thought to herself with the strange pang of joy which comes when we make some discovery which sweetens the whole of life, and which seems so self-evident that we can but wonder and wonder at our dense stupidity in not seeing it sooner. “I've been grudging Brian what God sees he most wants! I've been groaning over the libels and injustices which seem to bring so much pain and evil when, after all, they will be, in the long run, the very things to show people the need of tolerance, and to establish freedom of speech.”
Even this pain of renunciation seemed to gain a new meaning for her though she could not in the least fathom it; even the unspeakable grief of feeling that her father was devoting much of his life to the propagation of error, lost its bitterness though it retained its depth. For with the true realization of Fatherhood and Sonship impatience and bitterness die, and in their place rises the peace which “passeth understanding.”
“We will have a day of unmitigated pleasure,” her father had said to her, and the words had at the time been like a sharp stab. But, after all, might not this pain, this unseen and dimly understood work for humanity, be in very truth the truest pleasure? What artist is there who would not gratefully receive from the Master an order to attempt the loftiest of subjects? What poet is there whose heart would not bound when he knew he was called to write on the noblest of themes? All the struggles, all the weary days of failure, all the misery of conscious incompleteness, all the agony of soul these were but means to the end, and so inseparably bound up with the end that they were no more evil, but good, their darkness over flooded with the light of the work achieved.
Raeburn, coming into the room, saw what she was looking at, and turned away. Little as he could understand her thoughts, he was not the sort of man to wound unnecessarily one who differed from him. His words in public were sharp and uncompromising; in debate he did not much care how he hit as long as he hit hard. But, apart from the excitement of such sword play, he was, when convinced that his hearers were honest Christians, genuinely sorry to give them pain.
Erica found him looking at a Sevres china vase in which he could not by any possibility have been interested.
“I feel Mr. Ruskin's wrathful eye upon me,” she said, laughing. “Now after spending all that time before a Carlo Dolci, we must really go to the Uffizzi and look at Botticelli's 'Fortitude'. Brian and I nearly quarreled over it the last time we were there.”
So they wandered away together through the long galleries, Erica pointing out her favorite pictures and hearing his opinion about them. And indeed Raeburn was as good a companion as could be wished for in a picture gallery. The intense development of the critical faculty, which had really been the bane of his existence, came here to his aid for he had a quick eye for all that was beautiful both in art and nature, and wonderfully keen powers of observation. The refreshment, too, of leaving for a moment his life of excessive toil was great; Erica hoped that he really did find the day, for once, “unmitigated pleasure.”
They went to Santa Croce, they walked through the crowded market, they had a merry dispute about ascending the campanile.
“Just this one you really must let me try,” said Erica, “they say it is very easy.”
“To people without spines perhaps it may be,” said Raeburn.
“But think of the view from the top,” said Erica, “and it really won't hurt me. Now, padre mio, I'm sure it's for the greatest happiness of the greatest number that I should go up!”