But that one man should die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.Carlyle Not what I think, but what Thou art, makes sure.George MacDonald A wave of strangely varied feeling swept through the country in the next four-and-twenty hours.
From the Raeburnites came a burst of mingled wrath and grief, and a bitter outcry against the religion which inevitably they thought tended to produce such fanatics as Drosser.From the poor and oppressed came a murmur of blank despair; they had looked upon Raeburn as the deliverer from so much that now weighed upon them, and were so perfectly conscious that he understood their wants and difficulties in a way which others failed to do, that his death in the very prime of manhood simply stunned them.The liberal-minded felt a thrill of horror and indignation at the thought that such deeds as this could take place in the nineteenth century; realizing, however, with a shudder that the rash act of the ignorant fanatic was, in truth, no worse than the murder of hatred, the perpetual calumny and injustice which thousands of professing Christians had meted out to Raeburn.In nothing had the un-Christlikeness of the age been more conspicuous than in the way in which Raeburn had all his life been treated.
The fashionable world felt a sort of uncomfortableness.The news reached them at their laziest time of year; they came in from shooting parties to read the account in the papers; they discussed it in ball rooms and at evening parties at Brighton and Greyshot and the other autumnal resorts."So he was dead! Well, really they were tired of hearing his name! It was rather horrible, certainly, that his daughter should have seen it all, but such infamous creatures as Raeburn had no business to have daughters.
No doubt she would stand it very well anything, you know, for a little notoriety.Such people lived for notoriety.Of course the papers had put in a lot of twaddle that he had said on his death bed 'always had tried to work entirely for the good of humanity,'
and that sort of nonsense.This coffee ice is excellent.Let me get you another," after which the subject would be dropped, and the speakers would return to the ball room to improve upon Raeburn's life, which they presumed so severely to criticize, by a trois temps enlivened by a broad flirtation.
Here and there a gleam of good was effected inasmuch as some of the excessively narrow began to see what narrowness leads to.Mr.
Cuthbert, coming home from his annual Swiss tour, was leaning back sleepily in a first-class carriage at the Folkestone station when the voice of a newsboy recalled him to the every-day world with a slight shock.There was the usual list of papers; he was sleepy and thought he would not get one, but then came the loud voice, not a couple of yards from his ear, "Death of Mr.Raeburn! Death of Luke Raeburn this da-ay!"Mr.Cuthbert had his head out of the window in a moment.
"Here, paper!"
"These boys will call anything to sell their papers," he remarked to his companion; "I dare say it's nothing more than a rumor.""Precious good thing for the country if it was true," replied the other, a young fellow of two-and-twenty who dawdled through life upon an income of 5,000 pounds a year, and found it quite possible to combine the enjoyment of lax living with the due expression of very orthodox sentiments.
Mr.Cuthbert did not answer; his eye was traveling down a column of the newspaper, and he felt a curious pricking of remorse as he read.He had once been rude to Erica Raeburn; he had all his life retailed dubious stories about her father, knowing all the time that had any one believed such stories of himself upon such shaky evidence, he would have used very strong language about them.And now this fellow was dead! Curiously enough, Mr.Cuthbert, who had many times remarked that "Raeburn ought to be shut up, or better still, hung," was now the one to wish him alive again.Ugh! It was a horrible story.He quite shivered as he read the account of those days of torture.
But in a room at the Park Hotel, Ashborough, two very different men were discussing the same subject.Mr.Fane-Smith, with all his faults, had always been well-intentioned, and though frightful harm may be done by people with good intentions, they can never stand upon the same level as those who wilfully and maliciously offend.
All too plainly now he saw how grievously he had failed with regard to Raeburn, and patiently did he listen to Donovan's account of the really good work which Raeburn had effected in many instances.
"Much as you may hate his views, you must at least see that, as some one has well expressed it, 'It takes a high-souled man to move the masses even to a cleaner sty.' And I say that a man who worked as he worked, striving hard to teach the people to live for the general good, advocating temperance, promoting the spread of education, and somehow winning those whom no one else had ever touched to take an intelligent interest in politics, in science, and in the future of the race, that such a man claims our respect however much we may disagree with him.""But that he should have died ignorant like this!" exclaimed Mr.
Fane-Smith with a shudder.
"'Tis in truth a tragedy," said Donovan, sighing,."But I can well believe that in another world the barriers which he allowed to distort his vision will be removed; the very continuance of existence would surely be sufficient.""You are a universalist?" said Mr.Fane-Smith, not in the condemnatory tone he would once have assumed, but humbly, anxiously, like one who gropes his way in a dark place.
