Hitherto her great desire had been to be free from care, and to be happy; now the one important thing seemed not so much to be happy, as to know.To learn herself, and to help others to learn, became her chief object, and, with all the devotion of an earnest, high-souled nature, she set herself to act out these convictions.
She read hard, attended lectures, and twice a week taught in the night school attached to the Institute.
Charles Osmond could not help smiling as she described her days to him.She still retained something of the childishness of an Undine, and as they talked she had taken up her old position on the hearth rug, and Friskarina had crept on to her knee.Here, undoubtedly, was one whom ignorant people would stigmatize as "blue" or as a "femme savante;" they would of course be quite wrong and inexpressively foolish to use such terms, and yet there was, perhaps, something a little incongruous in the two sides, as it were, of Erica's nature, the keen intellect and the child-like devotion , the great love of learning and the intense love of fun and humor.Charles Osmond had only once in all his long years of experience met with a character which interested him so much.
"After all," he said, when they had talked for some time, "I have never told you that I came on a begging errand, and I half fear that you will be too busy to undertake any more work."Erica's face brightened at the word; was not work what she lived for?
"Oh! I am not too busy for anything!" she exclaimed."I shall quote Marcus Aurelius to you if you say I haven't time! What sort of work?""Only, when you can, to come to us in the afternoon and read a little to my mother.Do you think you could? Her eyes are failing, and Brian and I are hard at work all day; I am afraid she is very dull.""I should like to come very much," said Erica, really pleased at the suggestion."What sort of books would Mrs.Osmond like?""Oh, anything! History, travels, science, or even novels, if you are not above reading them!""I? Of course not," said Erica, laughing."Don't you think we enjoy them as much as other people? When there is time to read them, at least, which isn't often."Charles Osmond laughed.
"Very well then, you have a wide field.From Carlyle to Miss Bird, and from Ernst Haeckel to Charles Reade.I should make them into a big sandwich if I were you."He said goodbye, and left Erica still on the hearth rug, her face brighter than it had been for months.
"I like that man," she said to herself."He's honest and thorough, and good all through.Yet how in the world does he make himself believe in his creed? Goodness, Christlikeness.He looked so grand, too, as he said that.It is wonderful what a personal sort of devotion those three have for their ideal."She wandered away to recollections of Thekla Sonnenthal, and that carried her back to the time of their last parting, and the recollection of her sorrow.All at once the loneliness of the present was borne in upon her overwhelmingly; she looked around the little room, the Ilkley couch was pushed away into a corner, there was a pile of newspapers upon it.A great sob escaped her.For a minute she pressed her hands tightly together over her eyes, then she hurriedly opened a book on "Electricity," and began to read as if for her life.
She was roused in about an hour's time by a laughing exclamation.
She started, and looking up, saw her cousin Tom.
"Talk about absorption, and brown studies!" he cried, "why, you eat everything I ever saw.I've been looking at you for at least three minutes."Tom was now about nineteen; he had inherited the auburn coloring of the Raeburns, but otherwise he was said to be much more like the Craigies.He was nice looking, but somewhat freckled, and though he was tall and strongly built, he somehow betrayed that he had led a sedentary life and looked, in fact, as if he wanted a training in gymnastics.For the rest he was shrewd, business-like, good-natured, and at present very conceited.He had been Erica's friend and playfellow as long as she could remember; they were brother and sister in all but the name, for they had lived within a stone's throw of each other all their lives, and now shared the same house.
"I never heard you come in," she said, smiling a little."You must have been very quiet.""I don't believe you'd hear a salute fired in the next room if you were reading, you little book worm! But look here; I've got a parody on the chieftain that'll make you cry with laughing.You remember the smashed windows at the meeting at Rilchester last week?"Erica remembered well enough, she had felt sore and angry about it, and the comments in the newspapers had not been consolatory.She had learned to dread even the comic papers; but there was nothing spiteful in the one which Tom produced that evening.It was headed:
Scotch song (Tune--"Twas within a mile of Edinboro'town""Twas within a hall of Rilchester town, In the bleak spring-time of the year, Luke Raeburn gave a lecture on the soul of man, And found that it cost him dear.
Windows all were smashed that day, They said: 'The atheist can pay.'
But Scottish Raeburn, frowning cried:
'Na, na, it winna do, I canna, canna, winna, winna, munna pay for you.'"The parody ran on through the three verses of the song, the conclusion was really witty, and there was no sting in it.Erica laughed over it as she had not laughed for weeks.Tom, who had been trying unsuccessfully to cheer her ever since her return, was quite relieved.
"I believe the sixpence a day style suits you," he said."But, Isay, isn't anything coming up? I'm as hungry as a hunter."Their elders being away for a few days, Tom and Erica were amusing themselves by trying to live on the rather strange diet of the man who published his plan for living at the smallest possible cost.
They were already beginning to be rather weary of porridge, pea soup and lentils.This evening pea soup was in the ascendant, and Erica, tired with a long afternoon's work, felt as if she could almost as soon have eaten Thames mud.
