"What more can we do, mother?" she questioned."I can't think of a single thing we can give up.""I really don't know, dear," said her mother with a sigh."We have nothing but the absolute necessaries of life now, except indeed your education at the High School, and that is a very trifling expense, and one which cannot be interfered with."Erica was easily depressed, like most high-spirited persons; but she was not used to seeing either her father or her mother despondent, and the mere strangeness kept her from going down to the very deepest depths.She had the feeling that at least one of them must try to keep up.Yet, do what she would, that evening was one of the saddest and dreariest she had ever spent.All the excitement of contest was over, and a sort of dead weight of gloom seemed to oppress them.Raeburn was absolutely silent.From the first Erica had never heard him complain, but his anger, and afterward his intense depression, spoke volumes.Even Tom, her friend and play fellow, seemed changed this evening, grown somehow from a boy to a man; for there was a sternness about him which she had never seen before, and which made the days of their childhood seem far away.And yet it was not so very long ago that she and Tom had been the most light-hearted and careless beings in the world, and had imagined the chief interest of life to consist in tending dormice, and tame rats, and silk worms! She wondered whether they could ever feel free again, whether they could ever enjoy their long Saturday afternoon rambles, or whether this weight of care would always be upon them.
With a very heavy heart she prepared her lessons for the next day, finding it hard to take much interest in Magna Charta and legal enactments in the time of King John, when the legal enactments of today were so much more mind-engrossing.Tom was sitting opposite to her, writing letters for Raeburn.Once, notwithstanding his grave looks, she hazarded a question."Tom," she said, shutting up her "History of the English People," "Tom, what do you think will happen?"Tom looked across at her with angry yet sorrowful eyes.
"I think," he said, sternly, "that the chieftain will try to do the work of ten men at once, and will pay off these debts or die in the attempt."The "chieftain" was a favorite name among the Raeburnites for their leader, and there was a great deal of the clan feeling among them.
The majority of them were earnest, hard-working, thoughtful men, and their society was both powerful and well-organized, while their personal devotion to Raeburn lent a vigor and vitality to the whole body which might otherwise have been lacking.Perhaps comparatively few would have been enthusiastic for the cause of atheism had not that cause been represented by a high-souled, self-denying man whom they loved with all their hearts.
The dreary evening ended at length, Erica helped her mother to bed, and then with slow steps climbed up to her little attic room.It was cold and comfortless enough, bare of all luxuries, but even here the walls were lined with books, and Erica's little iron bedstead looked somewhat incongruous surrounded as it was with dingy-looking volumes, dusky old legal books, works of reference, books atheistical, theological, metaphysical, or scientific.On one shelf, amid this strangely heterogeneous collection, she kept her own particular treasures--Brian's Longfellow, one or two of Dickens's books which Tom had given her, and the beloved old Grimm and Hans Andersen, which had been the friends of her childhood and which for "old sakes' sake" she had never had the heart to sell.
The only other trace of her in the strange little bedroom was in a wonderful array of china animals on the mantlepiece.She was a great animal lover, and, being a favorite with every one, she received many votive offerings.Her shrine was an amusing one to look at.A green china frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw about half an inch high.
But tonight the childish side of Erica was in abeyance; the cares of womanhood seemed gathering upon her.She put out her candle and sat down in the dark, racking her brain for some plan by which to relieve her father and mother.Their life was growing harder and harder.It seemed to her that poverty in itself was bearable enough, but that the ever-increasing load of debt was not bearable.
As long as she could remember, it had always been like a mill-stone tied about their necks, and the ceaseless petty economies and privations seemed of little avail; she felt very much as if she were one of the Danaids, doomed forever to pour water into a vessel with a hole in it.
Yet in one sense she was better off than many, for these debts were not selfish debts--no one had ever known Raeburn to spend an unnecessary sixpence on himself; all this load had been incurred in the defense of what he considered the truth--by his unceasing struggles for liberty.She was proud of the debts, proud to suffer in what she regarded as the sacred cause; but in spite of that she was almost in despair this evening, the future looked so hopelessly black.
Tom's words rang in her head--"The chieftain will try to do the work of ten men!" What if he overworked himself as he had done once a few years ago? What if he died in the attempt? She wished Tom had not spoken so strongly.In the friendly darkness she did not try to check the tears which would come into her eyes at the thought.Something must be done! She must in some way help him!
