During her own long illness she had of course been debarred from attending any lectures or meetings whatever. In the years following, before she had quite regained her strength, she had generally gone to hear her father, but had never become again a regular attendant at the lecture hall. Now that she was quite well, however, there was nothing to prevent her attending as many lectures as she pleased, and naturally, her position as Luke Raeburn"s daughter made her presence desirable.
So it came to pa.s.s one Sunday evening in July that she happened to be present at a lecture given by a Mr. Masterman.
He was a man whom they knew intimately. Erica liked him sufficiently well in private life, and he had been remarkably kind and helpful at the time of her father"s illness. It was some years, however, since she had heard him lecture, and this evening, by the virulence of his attack on the character of Christ, he revealed to her how much her ground had shifted since she had last heard him. It was not that he was an opponent of existing Christianity her father was that, she herself was that, and felt bound to be as long as she considered it a lie but Mr. Masterman"s attack seemed to her grossly unfair, almost willfully inaccurate, and, in addition, his sarcasm and pleasantries seemed to her odiously vulgar.
He was answered by a most miserable representative of Christianity, who made a foolish, weak, bl.u.s.tering speech, and tried to pay the atheist back in his own coin. Erica felt wretched. She longed to get up and speak herself, longing flatly to contradict the champion of her own cause; then grew frightened at the strength of her feelings. Could this be mere love of fair play and justice? Was her feeling merely that of a barrister who would argue as well on one side as the other? And yet her displeasure in itself proved little or nothing. Would not Charles Osmond be displeased and indignant if he heard her father unjustly spoken of?
Yes, but then Luke Raeburn was a living man, and Christ was she even sure that he had ever lived? Well, yes, sure of that, but of how much more?
When the a.s.sembly broke up, her mind was in a miserable chaos of doubt.
It was one of those delicious summer evenings when even in East London the skies are mellow and the air sweet and cool.
"Oh, Tom, let us walk home!" she exclaimed, longing for change of scene and exercise.
"All right," he replied, "I"ll take you a short cut, if you don"t mind a few back slums to begin with."
Now Erica was familiar enough with the sight of poverty and squalor; she had not lived at the West End, where you may entirely forget the existence of the poor. The knowledge of evil had come to her of necessity much earlier than to most girls, and tonight, as Tom took her through a succession of narrow streets and dirty courts, misery, and vice, and hopeless degradation met her on every side. Swarms of filthy little children wrangled and fought in the gutters, drunken women shouted foul language at one another everywhere was wickedness everywhere want. Her heart felt as if it would break. What was to reach these poor, miserable fellow creatures of hers? Who was to raise them out of their horrible plight? The coa.r.s.e distortion and the narrow contraction of Christ"s teaching which she had just heard, offered no remedy for this evil. Nor could she think that secularism would reach these. To understand secularism you meed a fair share of intellect what intellect would these poor creatures have? Why, you might talk forever of the "good of humanity," and "the duty of promoting the general good,"
and they would not so much as grasp the idea of what "good" was they would sink back to their animal-like state. Instinctively her thoughts turned to the Radical Reformer who, eighteen hundred years ago, had lived among people just as wicked, just as wretched. How had He worked?
What had He done? All through His words and actions had sounded the one key-note, "Your Father." Always He had led them to look up to a perfect Being who loved them, who was present with them.
Was it possible that if Christians had indeed followed their Leader and not obscured His teaching with hideous secretions of doctrine which He had a.s.suredly never taught was it possible that the Christ-gospel in its original simplicity would indeed be the remedy for all evil?
They were coming into broader thoroughfares now. A wailing child"s voice fell on her ear. A small crowd of disreputable idlers was hanging round the closed doors of a public-house, waiting eagerly for the opening which would take place at the close of service-time. The wailing child"s voice grew more and more piteous. Erica saw that it came from a poor little half-clad creature of three years old who was clinging to the skirts of a miserable-looking woman with a shawl thrown over her head.
Just as she drew near, the woman, with a fearful oath, tried to shake herself free of the child; then, with uplifted arms, was about to deal it a heavy blow when Erica caught her hand as it descended, and held it fast in both her hands.
"Don"t hurt him," she said, "please don"t hurt him."
She looked into the prematurely wrinkled face, into the half-dim eyes, she held the hand fast with a pressure not of force but of entreaty.
Then they pa.s.sed on, the by-standers shouting out the derisive chorus of "Come to Jesus!" with which London roughs delight in mocking any pa.s.senger whom they suspect of religious tendencies. In all her sadness, Erica could not help smiling to herself. That she, an atheist, Luke Raeburn"s daughter, should be hooted at as a follower of Jesus!
In the meantime the woman she had spoken to stood still staring after her. If an angel had suddenly appeared to her, she could not have been more startled. A human hand had given her coa.r.s.e, guilty, trembling hand such a living pressure as it had never before received; a pure, loving face had looked at her; a voice, which was trembling with earnestness and full of the pathos of restrained tears, had pleaded with her for her own child. The woman"s dormant motherhood sprung into life. Yes, he was her own child after all. She did not really want to hurt him, but a sort of demon was inside her, the demon of drink and sometimes it made her almost mad. She looked down now with love-cleared eyes at the little crying child who still clung to her ragged skirt. She stooped and picked him up, and wrapped a bit of her shawl round him. Presently after a fearful struggle, she turned away from the public-house and carried the child home to bed.
The jeering chorus was soon checked, for the shutters were taken down, and the doors thrown wide, and light, and cheerfulness, and shelter, and the drink they were all craving for, were temptingly displayed to draw in the waiting idlers.
But the woman had gone home, and one rather surly looking man still leaned against the wall looking up the street where Tom and Erica had disappeared.
"Blowed if that ain"t a bit of pluck!" he said to himself, and therewith fell into a reverie.
Tom talked of temperance work, about which he was very eager, all the way to Guilford Terrace. Erica, on reaching home, went at once to her father"s room. She found him propped up with pillows in his arm chair; he was still only well enough to attempt the lightest of light literature, and was looking at some old volumes of "Punch" which the Osmonds had sent across.
"You look tired, Eric!" he exclaimed. "Was there a good attendance?"
"Very," she replied, but so much less brightly than usual that Raeburn at once divined that something had annoyed her.
"Was Mr. Masterman dull?"
"Not dull," she replied, hesitatingly. Then, with more than her usual vehemence, "Father, I can"t endure him! I wish we didn"t have such men on our side! He is so flippant, so vulgar!"
"Of course he never was a model of refinement," said Raeburn, "but he is effective very effective. It is impossible that you should like his style; he is, compared with you, what a theatrical poster is to a delicate tete-de-greuze. How did he specially offend you tonight?"
"It was all hateful from the very beginning," said Erica. "And sprinkled all through with doubtful jests, which of course pleased the people. One despicable one about the Entry into Jerusalem, which I believe he must have got from Strauss. I"m sure Strauss quotes it."
"You see what displeases an educated mind, wins a rough, uncultured one.
We may not altogether like it, but we must put up with it. We need our Moodys and Sankeys as well as the Christians."
"But, father, he seems to me so unfair."
Raeburn looked grave.
"My dear," he said, after a minute"s thought, "you are not in the least bound to go to hear Mr. Masterman again unless you like. But remember this, Eric, we are only a struggling minority, and let me quote to you one of our Scottish proverbs: "Hawks shouldna pick out hawks" een." You are still a hawk, are you not?"
"Of course," she said, earnestly.
"Well, then be leal to your brother hawks."
A cloud of perplexed thought stole over Erica"s face. Raeburn noted it and did his best to divert her attention.
"Come," he said, "let us have a chapter of Mark Twain to enliven us."
But even Mark Twain was inadequate to check the thought-struggle which had begun in Erica"s brain. Desperate earnestness would not be conquered even by the most delightful of all humorous fiction.
During the next few days this thought-struggle raged. So great was Erica"s fear of having biased either one way or the other that she would not even hint at her perplexity either to her father or to Charles Osmond. And now the actual thoroughness of her character seemed a hindrance.
She had imagination, quick perception of the true and beautiful, and an immense amount of steady common sense. At the same time she was almost as keen and quite as slow of conviction as her father. Honestly dreading to allow her poetic faculty due play, she kept her imagination rigidly within the narrowest bounds. She was thus honestly handicapped in the race; the honesty was, however, a little mistaken and one-sided, for not the most vivid imagination could be considered as a set-off to the great, the incalculable counter-influence of her whole education and surroundings. How she got through that black struggle was sometimes a mystery to her. At last, one evening, when the load had grown intolerable, she shut herself into her own room, and, forgetful of all her logical arguments, spoke to the unknown G.o.d. Her hopelessness, her desperation, drove her as a last resource to cry to the possibly Existent.
She stood by the open window of her little room, with her arms on the window sill, looking out into the summer night, just as years before she had stood when making up her mind to exile and sacrifice. Then the wintery heavens had been blacker and the stars brighter, now both sky and stars were dimmer because more light. Over the roofs of the Guilford Square houses she could see Charles" Wain and the Pole-star, but only faintly.
"G.o.d!" she cried, "I have no reason to think that Thou art except that there is such fearful need of Thee. I can see no single proof in the world that Thou art here. But if what Christ said was true, then Thou must care that I should know Thee, for I must be Thy child. Oh, G.o.d, if Thou art oh, Father, if Thou art help us to know Thee! Show us what is true!"
She waited and waited, hoping for some sort of answer, some thought, some conviction. But she found, as many have found before her, that "the heavens were as bra.s.s."
"Of course it was no use!" she exclaimed, impatiently, yet with a blankness of disappointment which in itself proved the reality of her expectations.
Just then she heard Tom"s voice at the foot of the stairs calling; it seemed like the seal to her impatient "of course." There was no Unseen, no Eternal of course not! But there was a busy every-day life to be lived.
"All right," she returned impatiently, to Tom"s repeated calls; "don"t make such a noise or else you"ll disturb father."
"He is wide awake," said Tom, "and talking to the professor. Just look here, I couldn"t help fetching you down did you ever see such a speech in your life? A regular brick he must be!"
He held an evening paper in his hand. Erica remembered that the debate was to be on a question affecting all free-thinkers. During the discussion of this, some one had introduced a reference to the Hyde Park meeting and to Mr. Raeburn, and had been careful not to lose the opportunity of making a spiteful and misleading remark about the apostle of atheism. Tom hurried her through this, however, to the speech that followed it.
"Wait a minute," she said. "Who is Mr. Farrant? I never heard of him before."
"Member for Greyshot, elected last spring, don"t you remember? One of the by-elections. Licked the Tories all to fits. This is his maiden speech, and that makes it all the more plucky of him to take up the cudgels in our defense. Here! Let me read it to you."
With the force of one who is fired with a new and hearty admiration, he read the report. The speech was undoubtedly a fine one; it was a grand protest against intolerance, a plea for justice. The speaker had not hesitated for an instant to raise his voice in behalf of a very unpopular cause, and his generous words, even when read through the medium of an indifferent newspaper report, awoke a strange thrill in Erica"s heart. The utter disregard of self, the n.o.bility of the whole speech struck her immensely. The man who had dared to stand up for the first time in Parliament and speak thus, must be one in a thousand.
Presently came the most daring and disinterested touch of all.
"The honorable member for Rilchester made what I can not but regard as a most misleading and unnecessary remark with reference to the recent occurrence in Hyde Park, and to Mr. Raeburn. I listened to it with pain, for, if there can be degrees in the absolute evil of injustice and lack of charity, it seems to me that the highest degree is reached in that uncharitableness which tries to blacken the character of an opponent.
Since the subject has been introduced, the House will, I hope, bear with me if for the sake of justice I for a moment allude to a personal matter. Some years ago I myself was an atheist, and I can only say that, speaking now from the directly opposite standpoint, I can still look back and thank Mr. Raeburn most heartily for the good service he did me.