第139章 The Most Unkindest Cut of All (1)

Those who persecuted them supposed of course that they were defending Christianity, but Christianity can be defended in no such way.It forbids all persecution all persecution for the sake of religion.Force cannot possibly propagate the truth or produce the faith, or promote the love in which the gospel consists....

Persecution can never arise from zeal for the Gospel as truth from zeal for the Gospel properly understood.If ever due to zeal in any measure, and not to pride, selfishness, anger, ambition, and other hateful lusts...It must be to a zeal which is in alliance with error....The men (atheists) therefore, who, by their courage and endurance were specially instrumental in convincing their countrymen that persecution for the avowal and advocacy even of atheism is a folly and a crime, have really rendered a service to the cause of Christian truth, and their names will not be recorded without honor when the history of our century is impartially written.Baird Lectures, 1877.R.Flint, D.D., Professor of Divinity, Edinburgh.

A few days later the brief holiday ended, and father and daughter were both hard at work again in London.They had crossed from Antwerp by night and had reached home about ten o'clock to find the usual busy life awaiting them.

Tom and Aunt Jean, who had been very dull in their absence, were delighted to have them back again; and though the air was thick with coming troubles, yet it was nevertheless a real home coming, while Erica, in spite of her hidden sorrow, had a very real enjoyment in describing her first foreign tour.They were making a late breakfast while she talked, Raeburn being more or less absorbed in the "Daily Review.""You see, such an early newspaper is a luxury now," said Erica.

"Not that he's been behaving well abroad.He promised me when we started that he'd eschew newspapers altogether and give his brain an entire rest; but there is a beguiling reading room at Florence, and there was no keeping him away from it.""What's that? What are you saying?" said Raeburn, absently.

"That very soon, father, you will be as absent-minded as King Stars-and-Garters in the fairy tale, who one day, in a fit of abstraction, buttered his newspaper and tried to read his toast."Raeburn laughed and threw down the "Daily Review.""Saucier than ever, isn't she, Tom? Well, we've come back to a few disagreeables; but then we've come back, thank man! To roast beef and Turkey towels, and after kickshaws and table napkins, one knows how to appreciate such things.""We could have done with your kickshaws here," said Tom."If you hadn't come back soon, Erica, I should have gone to the bad altogether, for home life, with the cook to cater for one, is intolerable.That creature has only two ideas in her head.We rang the changes on rice and stewed rhubarb.The rhubarb in its oldest stage came up four days running.We called it the widow;'s curse! Then the servants would make a point of eating onions for supper so that the house was insufferable.And at last we were driven from pillar to post by a dreadful process called house cleaning in which, undoubtedly, life is not worth living.In the end, Mr.Osmond took pity on me and lent me Brian's study.Imagine heretical writings emanating from that room!"This led the conversation round to Brian's visit to Florence, and Erica was not sorry to be interrupted by a note from Mr.Bircham, requesting her to write an article on the Kilbeggan murder.She found that the wheels of the household machinery would need a good deal of attention before they would move as smoothly as she generally contrived to make them.Things had somehow "got to wrongs" in her absence.And when at length she thought everything was in train and had got thoroughly into the spirit of a descriptive article on the Irish tragedy, the cook of two ideas interrupted her with what seemed, in contract, the most trivial matters.

"If you please, miss," she said, coming into the green room, just as the three villains in black masks were in the act of killing their victim, "I thought you'd wish to know that we are wanting a new set of kitchen cloths; and if you'll excuse me mentioning it, miss, there's Jane, miss, using glass cloths as tea cloths, and dusters as knife cloths."Erica looked slightly distracted, but diverted her mind from the state of Ireland to the state of the household linen, and, when left alone once more, laughed to herself at the incongruity of the two subjects.

It was nearly a fortnight before Brian returned from Switzerland.

Erica knew that he was in the well-known house on the opposite side of the square, and through the trees in the garden, they could see each the other's place of residence.It was a sort of nineteenth-century version of the Rhine legend, in which the knight of Rolandseek looked down upon Nomenwerth where his lady love was immured in a convent.

She had rather dreaded the first meeting, but, when it came, she felt nothing of what she had feared.She was in the habit of going on Sunday morning to the eight o'clock service at the church in the square.It was nearer than Charles Osmond's church, and the hour interfered less with household arrangements.Just at the corner of the square on the morning of Trinity Sunday, she met Brian.Her heart beat quickly as she shook hands with him, but there was something in his bearing which set her entirely at her ease after just the first minute.He looked much older, and a certain restlessness in look and manner had quite left him, giving place to a peculiar calm not unlike his father's expression.It was the expression which a man wears when he has lost the desire of his heart, yet manfully struggles on, allowing no bitterness to steal in, facing unflinchingly the grayness of a crippled life.Somehow, joining in that thanksgiving service seemed to give them the true key-note for their divided lives.As they came out into the porch, he asked her a question.