Presently the door opened, he looked up and saw Erica approaching him.She was taller than she had been when he last saw her, and now grief had given her a peculiar dignity which made her much more like her father.Every shade of color had left her face, her eyes wee full of a limitless pain, the eyelids were slightly reddened, but apparently rather from sleeplessness than from tears, the whole face was so altered that a mere casual acquaintance would hardly have recognized it, except by the unchanged waves of short auburn hair which still formed the setting as it were to a picture lovely even now.Only one thing was unchanged, and that was the frank, unconventional manner.Even in her grief she could not be quite like other people.
"It is very good of you to let me see you," said Brian, "you are sure you are doing right; it will not be too much for you today.""There is no great difference in says, I think," said Erica, sitting down on a low chair beside the fire."I do not very much believe in degrees in this kind of grief.I do not see why it should be ever more or ever less.Perhaps I am wrong, it is all new to me."She spoke in a slow, steady, low-toned voice.There was an absolute hopelessness about her whole aspect which was terrible to see.A moment's pause followed, then, looking up at Brian, she fancied that she read in his face, something of hesitation, of a consciousness that he could ill express what he wished to say, and her innate courtesy made her even now hasten to relieve him.
"Don't be afraid of speaking," she said, a softer light coming into her eyes."I don't know why people shrink from meeting trouble.
Even Tom is half afraid of me.I am not changed, I am still Erica;can't you understand how much I want every one now?
"People differ so much," said Brian, a little huskily, "and then when one feels strongly words do not come easily.""Do you think I would not rather have your sympathy than an oration from any one else! You who were here to the end! You who did everything for--for her.My father has told me very little, he was not able to, but he told me of you, how helpful you were, how good, not like an outsider at all!"Evidently she clung to the comforting recollection that at least one trustable, sympathetic person had been with her mother at the last.Brian could only say how little he had done, how much more he would fain have done had it been possible.
"I think you do comfort me by talking," said Erica."And now Iwant you, if you don't mind, to tell me all from the very first.
I can't torture my father by asking him, and I couldn't hear it from the landlady.But you were here, you can tell me all.Don't be afraid of hurting me; can't you understand, if the past were the only thing left to you, you would want to know every tiniest detail!"He looked searchingly into her eyes, he thought she was right.
There were no degrees to pain like hers! Besides, it was quite possible that the lesser details of her mother's death might bring tears which would relieve her.Very quietly, very reverently, he told her all that had passed--she already knew that her mother had died from aneurism of the heart--he told her how in the evening he had been summoned to her, and from the first had known that it was hopeless, had been obliged to tell her that the time for speech even was but short.He had ordered a telegram to be sent to her father at Birmingham, but Mrs.Craigie and Tom were out for the evening, and no one knew where they were to be found.He and the landlady had been alone.
"She spoke constantly of you," he continued."The very last words she said were these, 'Tell Erica that only love can keep from bitterness, that love is stronger than the world's unkindness.'
Then, after a minute's pause, she added, 'Be good to my little girl, promise to be good to her.' After that, speech became impossible, but I do not think she suffered.Once she motioned to me to give her the frame off the mantlepiece with your photograph;she looked at it and kept it near her--she died with it in her hand."Erica hid her face; that one trifling little incident was too much for her, the tears rained down between her fingers.That it should have come to that! No one whom she loved there at the last--but she had looked at the photograph, had held it to the very end, the voiceless, useless picture had been there, the real Erica had been laughing and talking at Paris! Brian talked on slowly, soothingly.
Presently he paused; then Erica suddenly looked up, and dashing away her tears, said, in a voice which was terrible in its mingled pain and indignation.
"I might have been here! I might have been with her! It is the fault of that wretched man who went bankrupt; the fault of the bigots who will not treat us fairly--who ruin us!"She sobbed with passionate pain, a vivid streak of crimson dyed her cheek, contrasting strangely with the deathly whiteness of her brow.
"Forgive me if I pain you," said Brian; "but have you forgotten the message I gave you? 'It is only love that can keep from bitterness!'""Love!" cried Erica; she could have screamed it, if she had not been so physically exhausted."Do you mean I am to love our enemies?""It is only the love of all humanity that can keep from bitterness," said Brian.
Erica began to think over his reply, and in thinking grew calm once more.By and by she lifted up her face; it was pale again now, and still, and perfectly hopeless.
"I suppose you think that only Christians can love all humanity,"she said, a little coldly.
