"No."
"Or heard him lecture?"
"No, indeed; I would not hear him on any account."
"Have you ever spoken with any of his intimate friends?"
"Mr. Raeburn"s acquaintances are not likely to mix with any one I should know."
"Then," cried Erica, "how can you know anything whatever about him? And how how DARE you say to me, his child, that he is a wicked man?"
"It is a matter of common notoriety."
"No," said Erica, "there you are wrong. It is notorious that my father teaches conscientiously teaches much that we regard as error, but people who openly accuse him of evil living find to their cost in the law courts that they have foully libeled him."
She flushed even now at the thought of some of the hateful and wicked accusations of the past. Then, after a moment"s pause, she continued more warmly:
"It is you people in society who get hold of some misquoted story, some ridiculous libel long ago crushed at the cost of the libeler it is you who do untold mischief! Only last summer I remember seeing in a paper the truest sentence that was ever written of my father, and it was this, "Probably no one man has ever had to endure such gross personal insults, such widespread hostility, such perpetual calumny." Why are you to judge him? Even if you had a special call to it, how could you justly judge him when you will not hear him, or know him, or fairly study his writings, or question his friends? How can you know anything whatever about him? Why, if he judged you and your party as you judge him, you would be furious!"
"My dear, you speak with so much warmth; if you would only discuss things calmly!" said Mr. Fane-Smith. "Remember what George Herbert says: "Calmness is a great advantage." You bring too much feeling to the discussion."
"How can I help feeling when you are slandering my father?" exclaimed Erica. "I have tried to be calm, but there are limits to endurance!
Would you like Rose to sit silently while my father told her without any ground that you were a wicked man?"
When matters were reversed in this crude way, Mr. Fane-Smith winced a little.
"The cases are different," he suggested.
"Do you think atheists don"t love their children as much as Christians?"
cried Erica, half choked with indignant anger. A vision of the past, of her dead mother, of her father"s never-failing tenderness brought a cloud of tears to her eyes. She brushed them away. "The cases are different, as you say; but does a man care less for his home, when outside it he is badgered and insulted, or does he care infinitely more?
Does a man care less for his child because, to get her food, he has had to go short himself, or does he care more? I think the man who has had to toil with all his might for his family loves it better than the rich man can. You say I speak with too much warmth, too much feeling. My complaint is the other way I can"t find words strong enough to give you any idea of what my father has always been to me. To leave him would be to wrong my conscience, and to forsake my duty; and to distrust G.o.d. I will NEVER leave him!"
With that she got up and left the room, and Mr. Fane-Smith leaned back in his chair with a sigh, his eyes fixed absently upon a portrait of Napoleon above his mantel piece, his mind more completely shaken out of its ordinary grooves than it had been for years. He was a narrow-minded man, but he was honest. He saw that he had judged Raeburn very unfairly.
But perhaps what occupied his thoughts the most was the question "Would Rose have been able to say of him all that Erica had said of her father?" He sighed many times, but after awhile slid back into the old habits of thought.
"Erica is a brave, n.o.ble, little thing," he said to himself, "but far from orthodox far from orthodox! Socinian tendencies."
CHAPTER XXVII. At Oak Dene Manor
Ah! To how many faith has been No evidence of things unseen, But a dim shadow that recasts the creed of the Phantasiasts.
For others a diviner creed Is living in the life they lead.
The pa.s.sing of their beautiful feet Blesses the pavement of the street, And all their looks and words repeat Old Fuller"s saying wise and sweet, Not as a vulture, but a dove, The Holy Ghost came from above.
Tales of a Wayside Inn. Longfellow
During the interview Erica had braced herself up to endure, but when it was over her strength all at once evaporated. She dragged herself upstairs somehow, and had just reached her room, when Mrs. Fane-Smith met her. She was preoccupied with her own anxieties, or Erica"s exhaustion could not have escaped her notice.
"I am really quite unhappy about Rose!" she exclaimed. "We must send for Doctor L----. Her cough seems so much worse, I fear it will turn to bronchitis. Are you learned in such things?"
"I helped to nurse Tom through a bad attack once," said Erica.
"Oh! Then come and see her," said Mrs. Fane-Smith.
Erica went without a word. She would not have liked Mrs. Fane-Smith"s fussing, but yet the sight of her care for Rose made her feel more achingly conscious of the blank in her own life that blank which nothing could ever fill. She wanted her own mother so terribly, and just now Mrs. Fane-Smith had touched the old wound roughly.
Rose seemed remarkably cheerful, and not nearly so much invalided as her mother thought.
"Mamma always thinks I am going to die if I"m at all out of sorts," she remarked, when Mrs. Fane-Smith had left the room to write to the doctor.
"I believe you want doctoring much more than I do. What is the matter?
You are as white as a sheet!"
"I am tired and rather worried, and my back is troublesome," said Erica.
"Then you"ll just lie down on my sofa," said Rose, peremptorily. "If you don"t, I shall get out of bed and make you."
Erica did not require much compulsion for every inch of her seemed to have a separate ache, and she was still all quivering and tingling with the indignant anger stirred up by her interview with Mr. Fane-Smith. She let Rose chatter away and tried hard to school herself into calmness.
By and by her efforts were rewarded; she not only grew calm, but fell asleep, and slept like any baby till the gong sounded for luncheon.
Luncheon proved a very silent meal; it was, if possible, more trying that breakfast had been. Mrs. Fane-Smith had heard all about the interview from her husband, and they were both perplexed and disturbed.
Erica felt uncertain of her footing with them, and could only wait for them to make the first move. But the grim silence tickled her fancy.
"Really," she thought to herself, "we might be so many horses munching away at mangers, for all we have said to each other."
But in spite of it she did not feel inclined to make conversation.
Later on she went for a drive with her aunt; the air revived her, and she began to feel more like herself again. They went out into the country, but on the way home Mrs. Fane-Smith stopped at one of the shops in High Street, leaving Erica in the carriage. She was leaning back restfully, watching a beautiful chestnut horse which was being held by a ragged boy at the door of the bank just opposite, when her attention was suddenly aroused by an ominous howling and barking. The chestnut horse began to kick, and the boy had as much as he could to hold him. Starting forward, Erica saw that a fox terrier had been set upon by another and larger dog, and that the two were having a desperate fight. The fox terrier was evidently fighting against fearful odds, for he was an old dog, and not nearly so strong as his antagonist; the howls and barks grew worse and worse; some of the pa.s.sengers ran off in a fright, others watched from a safe distance, but not one interfered.
Now Erica was a great lover of animals, and a pa.s.sionate lover of justice. Furious to see men and boys looking on without attempting to stop the mischief, she sprang out of the carriage, and, rushing up to the combatants, belabored the big dog with her parasol. It had a strong stick, but she hit so vehemently that it splintered all to bits, and still the dog would not leave its victim. Then, in her desperation, she hit on the right remedy; with great difficulty she managed to grasp him by the throat, and, using all her force, so nearly suffocated him that he was obliged to loosen his hold. At that moment, too, a strong man rushed forward and dealt him such a blow that he bounded off with a yell of pain, and ran howling down the street. Erica bent over the fox terrier then; the big dog had mangled it frightfully, it was covered with blood, and moaned piteously.
"Waif! My poor waif!" exclaimed a voice which she seemed to know. "Has that brute killed you?"
She looked up and saw Donovan Farrant; he recognized her, but they were both too much absorbed in the poor dog"s condition to think of any ordinary greeting.
"Where will you take him?" asked Erica.
Donovan stooped down to examine poor Waif"s injuries.
"I fear there is little to be done," he said. "But we might take him across to the chemist"s opposite. Will you hold my whip for me?"
She took it, and with infinite skill and tenderness Donovan lifted the fox terrier, while Erica hurried on in front to tell the chemist. They took Waif into a little back room, and did all they could for him; but the chemist shrugged his shoulders.
"Better kill the poor brute at once, Mr. Farrant," he said, blandly.