Never would she so gladly have believed in the doctrine of immortality as now, yet with characteristic honesty and resoluteness she set herself into an att.i.tude of rigid defense, lest through strong desire or mere bodily weariness she should drift into the acceptance of what might be, what indeed she considered to be error. But to her surprise, half to her disappointment, Brian did not even mention the evidences. She had braced herself up to withstand arguments drawn from the five hundred brothers, but the preparation was useless.
"I believe in the resurrection," said Brian, "because I cannot doubt Jesus Christ. He is the most perfectly lovable and trustable being I know, or can conceive of knowing. He said He should rise again, I believe that He did rise. He was perfectly truthful, therefore He could not mislead; He KNEW, therefore He could not be misled."
"We do not consider Him to be all that you a.s.sert," said Erica. "Nor do His followers make one inclined to think that either He or His teaching were so perfect as you try to make out. You are not so hard-hearted as some of them--"
She broke off, seeing a look of pain on her companion"s face. "Oh, what am I saying!" she cried in a very different tone, "you who have done so much--you who were always good to us--I did not indeed mean to hurt you, it is your creed that I can"t help hating, not you. You are our friend, you said so long ago."
"Always," said Brian; "never doubt that."
"Then you must forgive me for having wounded you," said Erica, her whole face softening. "You must remember how hard it all is, and that I am so very, very miserable."
He would have given his life to bring her comfort, but he was not a very great believer in words, and besides, he thought she had talked quite as long as she ought.
"I think," he said, "that, honestly acted out, the message intrusted to me ought to comfort your misery."
"I can"t act it out," she said.
"You will begin to try," was Brian"s answer; and then, with a very full heart, he said goodbye and left his Undine sitting by the fire, with her head resting on her hands, and the words of her mother"s message echoing in her ears. "It is only love that can keep from bitterness; love is stronger than the world"s unkindness."
Presently, not daring to dwell too much on that last scene which Brian had described, she turned to his strange, unexpected reason for his belief in the resurrection, and mused over the characteristics of his ideal. Then she thought she would like to see again what her ideal man had to say about his, and she got up and searched for a small book in a limp red cover, labeled "Life of Jesus of Nazareth--Luke Raeburn." It was more than two years since she had seen it; she read it through once more. The style was vigorous, the veiled sarcasms were not unpleasant to her, she detected no unfairness in the mode of treatment, the book satisfied her, the conclusion arrived at seemed to her inevitable--Brian Osmond"s ideal was not perfect.
With a sigh of utter weariness she shut the book and leaned back in her chair with a still, white, hopeless face. Presently Friskarina sprung up on her knee with a little sympathetic mew; she had been too miserable as yet to notice even her favorite cat very much, now a scarcely perceptible shade of relief came to her sadness, she stroked the soft gray head. But scarcely had she spoken to her favorite, when the cat suddenly turned away, sprung from her knee and trotted out of the room.
It seemed like actual desertion, and Erica could ill bear it just then.
"What, you too, Friskie," she said to herself, "are even you glad to keep away from me?"
She hid her face in her hands; desolate and miserable as she had been before, she now felt more completely alone.
In a few minutes something warm touching her feet made her look up, and with one bound Friskarina sprung into her lap, carrying in her mouth a young kitten. She purred contentedly, looking first at her child and then at her mistress, saying as plainly as if she had spoken:
"Will this comfort you?"
Erica stroked and kissed both cat and kitten, and for the first time since her trouble a feeling of warmth came to her frozen heart.
CHAPTER IX. Rose
A life of unalloyed content, A life like that of land-locked seas.
J. R. Lowell
"Elspeth, you really must tell me, I"m dying of curiosity, and I can see by your face you know all about it! How is it that grandpapa"s name is in the papers when he has been dead all these years? I tell you I saw it, a little paragraph in today"s paper, headed, "Mr. Luke Raeburn." Is this another namesake who has something to do with him?"
The speaker was a tall, bright-looking girl of eighteen, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired blond, with a saucy little mouth, about which there now lurked an expression of undisguised curiosity. Rose, for that was her name, was something of a coax, and all her life long she had managed to get her own way; she was an only child, and had been not a little spoiled; but in spite of many faults she was lovable, and beneath her outer sh.e.l.l of vanity and self-satisfaction there lay a sterling little heart.
Her companion, Elspeth, was a wrinkled old woman, whose smooth gray hair was almost hidden by a huge mob-cap, which, in defiance of modern custom, she wore tied under her chin. She had nursed Rose and her mother before her and had now become more like a family friend than a servant.
"Miss Rose," she replied, looking up from her work, "if you go on chatter-magging away like this, there"ll be no frock ready for you tonight," and with a most uncommunicative air, the old woman turned away, and gave a little impressive shake to the billowy ma.s.s of white tarletan to which she was putting the finishing touches.
"The white lilies just at the side," said Rose, her attention diverted for a moment. "Won"t it be lovely! The prettiest dress in the room, I"m sure." Then, her curiosity returning, "But, Elspeth, I sha"nt enjoy the dance a bit unless you tell me what Mr. Luke Raeburn has to do with us?
Listen, and I"ll tell you how I found out. Papa brought the paper up to Mamma, and said, "Did you see this?" And then mamma read it, and the color came all over her face, and she did not say a word, but went out of the room pretty soon. And then I took up the paper, and looked at the page she had been reading, and saw grandpapa"s name."
"What was it about?" asked old Elspeth.
"That"s just what I couldn"t understand; it was all about secularists.
What are secularists? But it seems that this Luke Raeburn, whoever he is, has lost his wife. While he was lecturing at Birmingham on the soul, it is said, his wife died, and this paragraph said it seemed like a judgment, which was rather cool, I think."
"Poor laddie!" signed old Elspeth.
"Elspeth," cried Rose, "do you know who the man is?"
"Miss Rose," said the old woman severely, "in my young days there was a saying that you"d do well to lay to heart, "Ask no questions, and you"ll be told no stories.""
"It isn"t your young days now, it"s your old days, Elsie," said the imperturbable Rose. "I will ask you questions as much as I please, and you"ll tell me what this mystery means, there"s a dear old nurse! Have I not a right to know about my own relations?"
"Oh, bairn, bairn! If it were anything you"d like to hear, but why should you know what is all sad and gloomful? No, no, go to your b.a.l.l.s, and think of your fine dresses and gran" partners, though, for the matter of that, it is but vanity of vanities--"
"Oh, if you"re going to quote Ecclesiastes, I shall go!" said Rose, pouting. "I wish that book wasn"t in the Bible! I"m sure such an old grumbler ought to have been in the Apocrypha."
Elspeth shook her head, and muttered something about judgment and trouble. Rose began to be doubly curious.
"Trouble, sadness, a mystery--perhaps a tragedy! Rose had read of such things in books; were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery.
That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those unknown things, trouble and sadness.
"Elspeth, you treat me like a child!" she exclaimed; "it"s really too bad of you."
"Maybe you"re right, bairn," said the old nurse; "but it"s no doing of mine. But look here, Miss Rose, you be persuaded by me, go straight to your mamma and ask her yourself. Maybe there is a doubt whether you oughtn"t to know, but there is no doubt that I mustn"t tell you."
Rose hesitated, but presently her curiosity overpowered her reluctance.
Mrs. Fane-Smith, or, as she had been called in her maiden days, Isabel Raeburn, was remarkably like her daughter in so far as features and coloring were concerned, but she was exceedingly unlike her in character, for whereas Rose was vain and self-confident, and had a decided will of her own, her mother was diffident and exaggeratedly humble. She was a kind-hearted and a good woman, but she was in danger of hara.s.sing herself with the question, "What will people say?"
She looked up apprehensively as her daughter came into the room.
Rose felt sure she had been crying, her curiosity was still further stimulated, and with all the persuasiveness at her command, she urged her mother to tell her the meaning of the mysterious paragraph.
"I am sorry you have asked me," said Mrs. Fane-Smith, "but, perhaps, since you are no longer a child, you had better know. It is a sad story, however, Rose, and I should not have chosen to tell it to you today of all days."
"But I want to hear, mamma," said Rose, decidedly. "Please begin. Who is this Mr. Raeburn?"
"He is my brother," said Mrs. Fane-Smith, with a little quiver in her voice.
"Your brother! My uncle!" cried Rose, in amazement.
"Luke was the oldest of us," said Mrs. Fane-Smith, "then came Jean, and I was the youngest of all, at least of those who lived."
"Then I have an aunt, too, an Aunt Jean?" exclaimed Rose.
"You shall hear the whole story," replied her mother. She thought for a minute, then in rather a low voice she began: "Luke and Jean were always the clever ones, Luke especially; your grandfather had set his heart on his being a clergyman, and you can fancy the grief it was to us when he threw up the whole idea, and declared that he could never take Orders.