第8章 Life From Another Point of View (1)

Toleration an attack on Christianity? What, then, are we to come to this pass, to suppose that nothing can support Christianity but the principles of persecution?...I am persuaded that toleration, so far from being an attack on Christianity, becomes the best and surest support that can possibly be given to it...

.Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none...God forbid.I may be mistaken, but I take toleration to be a part of religion.Burke Erica was, apparently, well used to receiving strangers.She put down the toasting fork, but kept the cat in her arms, as she rose to greet Charles Osmond, and her frank and rather child-like manner fascinated him almost as much as it had fascinated Brian.

"My father will be home in a few minutes," she said; "I almost wonder you didn't meet him in the square; he has only just gone to send off a telegram.Can you wait? Or will you leave a message?""I will wait, if I may," said Charles Osmond."Oh, don't trouble about a light.I like this dimness very well, and, please, don't let me interrupt you."Erica relinquished a vain search for candle lighters, and took up her former position on the hearth rug with her toasting fork.

"I like the gloaming, too," she said."It's almost the only nice thing which is economical! Everything else that one likes specially costs too much! I wonder whether people with money do enjoy all the great treats.""Very soon grow blase, I expect," said Charles Osmond."The essence of a treat is rarity, you see.""I suppose it is.But I think I could enjoy ever so many things for years and years without growing blase," said Erica.

"Sometimes I like just to fancy what life might be if there were no tiresome Christians, and bigots, and lawsuits."Charles Osmond laughed to himself in the dim light; the remark was made with such perfect sincerity, and it evidently had not dawned on the speaker that she could be addressing any but one of her father's followers.Yet the words saddened Him too.He just caught a glimpse through them of life viewed from a directly opposite point.

"Your father has a lawsuit going on now, has he not?" he observed, after a little pause.

"Oh, yes, there is almost always one either looming in the distance or actually going on.I don't think I can ever remember the time when we were quite free.It must feel very funny to have no worries of that kind.I think, if there wasn't always this great load of debt tied round our necks, like a millstone, I should feel almost light enough to fly.And then it IS hard to read in some of those horrid religious papers that father lives an easy-going life.

Did you see a dreadful paragraph last week in the 'Church Chronicle?'""Yes, I did," said Charles Osmond, sadly.

"It always has been the same," said Erica."Father has a delightful story about an old gentleman who at one of his lectures accused him of being rich and self-indulgent--it was a great many years ago, when I was a baby, and father was nearly killing himself with overwork--and he just got up and gave the people the whole history of his day, and it turned out that he had had nothing to eat.Mustn't the old gentleman have felt delightfully done? Ialways wonder how he looked when he heard about it, and whether after that he believed that atheists are not necessarily everything that's bad.""I hope such days as those are over for Mr.Raeburn," said Charles Osmond, touched both by the anecdote and by the loving admiration of the speaker.

"I don't know," said Erica, sadly."It has been getting steadily worse for the last few years; we have had to give up thing after thing.Before long I shouldn't wonder if these rooms in what father calls "Persecution alley" grew too expensive for us.But, after all, it is this sort of thing which makes our own people love him so much, don't you think?""I have no doubt it is," said Charles Osmond, thoughtfully.

And then for a minute or two there was silence.Erica, having finished her toasting, stirred the fire into a blaze, and Charles Osmond sat watching the fair, childish face which looked lovelier than ever in the soft glow of the fire light.What would her future be, he wondered.She seemed too delicate and sensitive for the stormy atmosphere in which she lived.Would the hard life embitter her, or would she sink under it? But there was a certain curve of resoluteness about her well-formed chin which was sufficient answer to the second question, while he could not but think that the best safeguard against the danger of bitterness lay in her very evident love and loyalty to her father.

Erica in the meantime sat stroking her cat Friskarina, and wondering a little who her visitor could be.She liked him very much, and could not help responding to the bright kindly eyes which seemed to plead for confidence; though he was such an entire stranger she found herself quite naturally opening out her heart to him.

"I am to take notes at my father's meeting tonight," she said, breaking the silence, "and perhaps write the account of it afterward, too, and there's such a delightfully funny man coming to speak on the other side.""Mr.Randolph, is it not?"

"Yes, a sort of male Mrs.Malaprop.Oh, such fun!" and at the remembrance of some past encounter, Erica's eyes positively danced with laughter.But the next minute she was very grave.

"I came to speak to Mr.Raeburn about this evening," said Charles Osmond."Do you know if he has heard of a rumor that this Mr.

Randolph has hired a band of roughs to interrupt the meeting?"Erica made an indignant exclamation.

"Perhaps that was what the telegram was about," she continued, after a moment's thought."We found it here when we came in.

Father said nothing, but went out very quickly to answer it.Oh!

Now we shall have a dreadful time of it, I suppose, and perhaps he'll get hurt again.I did hope they had given up that sort of thing."She looked so troubled that Charles Osmond regretted he had said anything, and hastened to assure her that what he had heard was the merest rumor, and very possibly not true.