"But understand this," continued Mr.Fane-Smith, "that I approve less than ever of your intimacy with Rose, and until you come to see your folly in staying here, your worse than folly your deliberate choice of home and refusal to put religious duty first there had better be no more intercourse between us.""Can you indeed think that religious duty ever requires a child to break the fifth commandment?" said Erica with no anger but with a certain sadness in her tone."Can you really think that by leaving my father I should be pleasing a perfectly loving God?""You lean entirely on your own judgment!" said Mr.Fane-Smith; "if you were not too proud to be governed by authority, you would see that precedent shows you to be entirely in the wrong.St.John rushed from the building polluted by the heretic Cerinthus, a man who, compared with your father, was almost orthodox!"Erica smiled faintly.
"If that story is indeed true, I should think he remembered before long a reproof his intolerance brought him once.'Ye know not what spirit ye are of." And really, if we are to fall back upon tradition, I may quote the story of Abraham turning the unbeliever out of his tent on a stormy night.'I have suffered him these hundred years,' was the Lord's reproof, 'though he dishonored Me, and couldst thou not endure him for one night?' I am sorry to distress you, but I must do what I know to be right.
"Don't talk to me of right," exclaimed Mr.Fane-Smith with a shudder."You are wilfully putting your blaspheming father before Christ.But I see my words are wasted.Let me pass! The air of this house is intolerable to me!"He hurried away, his anger flaming up again when Tom followed him, closing the door of the cab with punctilious politeness.Rose was frightened.
"Oh, papa," she said, trembling, "why are you so angry? You haven't been scolding Erica about it? If there was any fault anywhere, the fault was mine.What did you say to her, papa? What have you been doing?"Mr.Fane-Smith was in that stage of anger when it is pleasant to repeat all one's hot words to a second audience and, moreover, he wanted to impress Rose with the enormity of her visit.He repeated all that he had said to Erica, interspersed with yet harder words about her perverse self-reliance and disregard for authority.
Rose listened, but at the end she trembled no longer.She had in her a bit of the true Raeburn nature with its love of justice and its readiness to stand up for the oppressed.
"Papa," she said, all her spoiled-child manners and little affectations giving place to the most perfect earnestness, "papa, you must forgive me for contradicting you, but you are indeed very much mistaken.I may have been silly to go there.Erica did try all she could to persuade me to go back to Greyshot yesterday; but I am glad I stayed even though you are so angry about it.If there is a noble, brave girl on earth, it is Erica! You don't know what she is to them all, and how they all love her.I will tell you what this visit has done for me.It has made me ashamed of myself, and I am going to try to be wiser, and less selfish."It was something of an effort to Rose to say this, but she had been very much struck with the sight of Erica's home life, and she wanted to prove to her father how greatly he had misjudged her cousin.Unfortunately, there are some people in this world who, having once got an idea into their heads, will keep it in the teeth of the very clearest evidence to the contrary.
In the meantime, Tom had rejoined Erica in the hall.
"How can such a brute have such a daughter?" he said."Never mind, Cugina, you were a little brick, and treated him much better than he deserved.If that is a Christian, and this a Latitudinarian and all the other heresies he threw at your head, all I can say is, commend me to your sort, and may I never have the misfortune to encounter another of his!"Erica did not reply; she felt too sick at heart.She walked slowly upstairs, trying to stifle the weary longing for Brian which, though very often present, became a degree less bearable when her isolated position between two fires, as it were had been specially emphasized.
"That's a nice specimen of Christian charity!" said Aunt Jean as they returned to the green room.
"And he set upon Erica at the door and hurled hard names at her as fast as he could go," said Tom, proceeding to give a detailed account of Mr.Fane-Smith's parting utterances.
Erica picked up Tottie and held him closely, turning, as all lovers of animals do in times of trouble, to the comforting devotion of those dumb friends who do not season their love with curiosity or unasked advice, or that pity which is less sympathetic than silence, and burdens us with the feeling that our sad "case" will be gossiped over in the same pitying tones at afternoon teas and morning calls.Tottie could not gossip, but he could talk to her with his bright brown eyes, and do something to fill a great blank in her life.
Tom's account of the scene in the hall made every one angry.
"And yet," said Mrs.MacNaughton, "these Christians, who used to us such language as this, own as their Master one who taught that a mere angry word which wounded a neighbor should receive severe punishment!"Raeburn said nothing, only watched Erica keenly.She was leaning against the mantel piece, her eyes very sad-looking, and about her face that expression of earnest listening which is characteristic of those who are beginning to learn the true meaning of humility and "righteous judgment." She had pushed back the thick waves of hair which usually overshadowed her forehead, and looked something between a lion with a tangled mane and a saint with a halo.
