She was much more ready to hear and much less ready to criticize, her humorous talk was freer from sarcasm, her whole bearing characterized by a sort of quiet steadfastness which made her curiously like her father.His philosophical calm had indeed been gained in a very different way, but in each the calmness was the direct result of exceptionally trying circumstances brought to bear on a noble nature.
"Herr Haeberlein has come here to be nursed," said Raeburn when the greetings were over."Will you see that a room is got ready, dear?"He went out into the hall to dismiss the cab, and Haeberlein seized the opportunity to correct his words.
"He thinks I shall get better, but it is impossible, my Herzblattchen; it is only a question of weeks now, possibly only of days.Was I wrong to come to you?""Of course not," she said with the sort of tender deference with which she always spoke to him."Did you think father would let you go anywhere else?""I didn't think about it,"said Haeberlein wearily; "but he wouldn't, you see."Raeburn returned while he was speaking, and Erica went away quickly to see to the necessary preparations.Herr Haeberlein had come, and she did not for a moment question the rightness of her father's decision; but yet in her heart she was troubled about it, and she could see that both her aunt and Tom were troubled too.The fact was that for some time they had seen plainly enough that Raeburn's health was failing, and they dreaded any additional anxiety for him.A man can not be involved in continual and harassing litigation and at the same time agitate perseveringly for reform, edit a newspaper, write books, rush from Land's End to John O'Groat's, deliver lectures, speak at mass meetings, teach science, befriend every unjustly used person, and go through the enormous amount of correspondence, personal supervision, and inevitable interviewing which falls to the lot of every popular leader, without sooner or later breaking down.
Haeberlein had come, however, and there was no help for it.They all did their very utmost for him, and those last weeks of tender nursing were perhaps the happiest of his life.Raeburn never allowed any one to see how the lingering expectation, the dark shadow of the coming sorrow, tried him.He lived his usual busy life, snatching an hour whenever he could to help in the work of nursing, and bringing into the sick room the strange influence of his strength and serenity.
The time wore slowly on.Haeberlein, though growing perceptibly weaker, still lingered, able now and then to enter into conversation, but for the most part just lying in patient silence, listening with a curious impartiality to whatever they chose to read to him, or whatever they began to talk about.He had all his life been a man of no particular creed, and he retained his curious indifference to the end, though Erica found that he had a sort of vague belief in a First Cause, and a shadowy expectation of a personal existence after death.She found this out through Brian, who had a way of getting at the minds of his patients.
One very hot afternoon she had been with him for several hours when about five o'clock her father came into the room.Another prosecution under the blasphemy Laws had just commenced.He had spent the whole day in a stifling law court, and even to the dying man his exhaustion was apparent.
"Things gone badly?" he asked.
"Much as I expected," said Raeburn, taking up a Marechal Niel rose from the table and studying it abstractedly."I've had a sentence of Auerbach's in my head all day, 'The martyrdom of the modern world consists of a long array of thousands of trifling annoyances.' These things are in themselves insignificant, but multiplication makes them a great power.You have been feeling this heat, I'm afraid.I will relieve guard, Erica.Is your article ready?""Not quite," she replied, pausing to arrange Haeberlein's pillows while her father raised him.
"Thank you, little Herzblattchen," he said, stroking her cheek, "auf wiedersehen.""Auf wiedersehen," she replied brightly and, gathering up some papers, ran downstairs to finish her work for the "Daily Review."A few minutes later Brian came in for his second visit.
"Any change?" he asked.
"None, I think," she answered, and went on with her writing with an apprehensive glance every now and then at the clock.The office boy was mercifully late however, and it must have been quite half an hour after she had left Haeberlein's room that she heard his unwelcome ring.Late as it was, she was obliged to keep him waiting a few minutes for it was exceedingly difficult in those days to get her work done.Not only was the time hard to obtain, but the writing itself was a difficulty; her mind was occupied with so many other things, and her strength was so overtasked that it was often an effort almost intolerable to sit down and write on the appointed subject.
She was in the hall giving her manuscript to the boy when she saw her father come downstairs; she followed him into the study, and one look at his face told her what had happened.He was leaning back in the chair in which but a few weeks before she had seen Haeberlein himself; it came over her with a shudder that he looked almost as ill now as his friend had looked.She sat down on the arm of his chair, and slipped her hand into his, but did not dare to break the silence.At last he looked up.
"I think you know it," he said."It is all over, Erica.""Was Brian there?" she asked.
"Happily, yes; but there was nothing to be done.The end was strangely sudden and quite painless, just what one would have wished for him.But oh, child! I can ill spare such a friend just now!"His voice failed, and great tears gathered in his eyes.He let his head rest for a minute on Erica's shoulder, conscious of a sort of relief in the clasp of arms which had so often, in weak babyhood, clung to him for help, conscious of the only comfort there could be for him as his child's kisses fell on his lips, and brow, and hair.
