第171章 Mors Janua Vitae (4)

And Brian did understand.He knew, too, that she wanted to have her father to herself.Even in the very fulfillment of his desire he was obliged to stand aside, obliged even yet to be patient.

Never surely had an impulsive, impetuous man a longer training.

When he had gone Raeburn talked for some time of Erica's future, talked for so long, indeed, that she grew impatient.How trifling now seemed the sacrifice she had made at Fiesole to which he kept on referring.

"Oh, why do you waste the time in talking of me?" she said at last.

"Why?" he said smiling."Because you are my bairn of what else should I speak or think? For myself, I am very content, dear, though I should have liked a few more years of work.It was not to be, you see; and, in the end, no doubt this will work good to the cause of " he broke off, unwilling to pain her.

"Ah, child!" he said after a pause, "How miserable you and I might have been for these two years if we had not loved each other.You are not to think, little one, that I have not known what your wishes have been for me.You, and Brian, and Osmond, and of late that noble fellow Farrant, have often made me see that Christianity need not necessarily warp the intellect and cripple the life.Ibelieve that for you, and such as you, the system is not rooted in selfishness.But, dear, you are but the exceptions, the rare exceptions.I know that you have wished with all your heart that I should come to think as you do, while I have been wishing you back into the ranks of secularism.Well! It wasn't to be.We each of us lost our wish.But there is this left, that we each know the other to be honest; each deem it a case of honest mistake.

I've felt that all along.We've a common love of truth and a common love of humanity.Oh, my child! Spite of all the creeds, we are very near to each other!""Very near," she whispered.And words which Charles Osmond had spoken years ago returned to her memory."I think death will be your gate of life.You will wake up and exclaim: "Who'd have thought it?"After all, death would in a sense make them yet nearer! But human nature is weak, and it is hard for us to realize the Unseen.She could not then feel that it was anything but hard, bitter, heart-breaking that he should be leaving her in this way.

The pain had now almost entirely ceased, and Raeburn, though very restless, was better able to talk than on the previous day.He asked for the first time what was passing in the world, showed special interest in the accounts of the late colliery accident, and was greatly touched by the gallant efforts of the rescuers who had to some extent been successful.He insisted, too, on hearing what the various papers had to say about his own case, listening sometimes with a quiet smile, sometimes with a gleam of anger in his eyes.After a very abusive article, which he had specially desired to hear, he leaned back with an air of weariness.

"I'm rather tired of this sort of thing!" he said with a sigh.

"What will the 'Herald' do when it no longer has me to abuse?"Of Drosser and of the events of that Sunday evening he spoke strangely little.What he did say was, for the most part, said to Professor Gosse.

"You say I was rash to go alone," he replied when the professor had opened the subject."Well, that may be.It is not, perhaps, the first time that in personal matters I've been lacking in due caution.But I thought it would prevent a riot.I still think it did so.""And what is your feeling about the whole matter?" asked the professor."Do you forgive Drosser for having given you this mortal injury?""One must bow to necessity," said Raeburn quietly."When you speak of forgiving I don't quite understand you; but I don't intend to hand down a legacy of revenge to my successors.The law will duly punish the man, and future atheists will reap the benefit of my death.There is, after all, you know, a certain satisfaction in feeling that I died as I have lived, in defending the right of free speech.I can't say that I could not have wished that Drosser had made an end of me at nine-and-seventy rather than at nine-and-forty.I shall live on in their hearts, and that is a glorious immortality! The only immortality I have ever looked for."In the afternoon to the astonishment of all, Mr.Fane-Smith came over from Greyshot, horrified to hear that the man who he had once treated with scant justice and actual discourtesy was lying on his death bed, a victim to religious fanaticism.Spite of his very hard words to her, Erica had always respected Mr.Fane-Smith, and she was glad that he had come at the last.Her aunt had not come;she had hesitated long, but in the end the recollection that Greyshot would be greatly scandalized, and that, too, on the very eve of her daughter's wedding turned the scale.She sent affectionate messages and a small devotional book, but stayed at home.

Mr.Fane-Smith apologized frankly and fully to Raeburn for his former discourtesy and then plunged at once into eager questions and eager arguments.He could not endure the thought that the man in whom at the last he was able to recognize a certain nobility of character, should be sinking down into what he considered everlasting darkness.Bitterly did he now regret the indifference of former years, and the actual uncharitableness in which he had of late indulged.

Raeburn lay very passively listening to an impassioned setting forth of the gospel, his hands wandering about restlessly, picking up little bits of the coverlet in that strange way so often noticed in dying people.

"You are mistaken," he said when at length Mr.Fane-Smith ceased.