第27章 What the New Year Brought (3)

Despair--the deprivation of all hope--is sometimes wild, but oftener calm with a deathly calmness.Erica was absolutely still --she scarcely moved or spoke during the long weary journey to Calais.Twice only did she feel the slightest desire for any outward vent.At the Amiens station the school boy in the corner, who had been growing more restless and excited every hour, sprung from the carriage to greet a small crowd of relations who were waiting to welcome him.She saw him rush to his mother, heard a confused affectionate babel of inquiries, congratulations, laughter.Oh! To think of that happy light-heartedness and the contrast between it and her grief.The laughter seemed positively to cut her; she could have screamed from sheer pain.And, as if cruel contrasts were fated to confront her, no sooner had her father established her in the cabin on board the steamer, than two bright looking English girls settled themselves close by, and began chatting merrily about the new year, and the novel beginning it would be on board a Channel steamer.Erica tried to stop her ears that she might not hear the discussion of all the forthcoming gayeties."Lady Reedham's dance on Thursday, our own, you know, next week," etc., etc.But she could not shut out the sound of the merry voices, or that wounding laughter.

Presently an exclamation made her look and listen.

"Hark!" said one of her fellow passengers."We shall start now; Ihear the clock striking twelve.A happy new year to you, Lily, and all possible good fortune.""Happy new year!" echoed from different corners of the cabin; the little Sister of Mercy knelt down and told her beads, the rest of the passengers talked, congratulated, laughed.Erica would have given worlds to be able to cry, but she could not.The terrible mockery of her surroundings was too great, however, to be borne;her heart seemed like ice, her head like fire; with a sort of feverish strength she rushed out of the cabin, stumbled up the companion, and ran as if by instinct to that part of the deck where a tall, solitary figure stood up darkly in the dim light.

"It's too cold for you, my child," said Raeburn, turning round at her approach.

"Oh, father, let me stay with you," sobbed Erica, "I can't bear it alone."Perhaps he was glad to have her near him for his own sake, perhaps he recognized the truth to which she unconsciously testified that human nature does at times cry out for something other than self, stronger and higher.

He raised no more objections, they listened in silence till the sound of the church bells died away in the distance, and then he found a more sheltered seat and wrapped her up closely in his own plaid, and together they began their new year.The first lull in Erica's pain came in that midnight crossing; the heaving of the boat, the angry dashing of the waves, the foam-laden wind, all seemed to relieve her.Above all there was comfort in the strong protecting arm round her.Yet she was too crushed and numb to be able to wish for anything but that the end might come for her there, that together they might sink down into the painless silence of death.

Raeburn only spoke once throughout the passage; instinctively he knew what was passing in Erica's mind.He spoke the only word of comfort which he had to speak: a noble one, though just then very insufficient:

"There is work to be done."

Then came the dreary landing in the middle of the dark winter's night, and presently they were again in a railway carriage, but this time alone.Raeburn made her lie down, and himself fell asleep in the opposite corner; he had been traveling uninterruptedly for twenty hours, had received a shock which had tried him very greatly, now from sheer exhaustion he slept.But Erica, to whom the grief was more new, could not sleep.Every minute the pain of realization grew keener.Here she was in England once more, this was the journey she had so often thought of and planned.This was going home.Oh, the dreariness of the reality when compared with those bright expectations.And yet it was neither this thought nor the actual fact of her mother's death which first brought the tears to her burning eyes.