Brian did not even miss him. How could he at such a time? The weight of years had been lifted off his soul. A consuming happiness took possession of him; his whole being was a thanksgiving. By and by he went home, found his father in the study, and was about to speak, when Charles Osmond put an open letter into his hand. While Raeburn had written to his sister, Erica had written to her “prophet” a sad, happy, quaint letter exactly like herself. Its straightforward simplicity brought the tears to Brian's eyes.
“It will be a fearful life for her now!” he exclaimed. “She will never be able to endure it. Father, now at last I may surely speak to her.”
He spoke very eagerly. Charles Osmond looked grave.
“My dear old fellow, of course you must do as you think best,” he replied, after a minute's pause; “but I doubt if it is wise just now.”
“Why, it is the very time of all others when she might be glad of me,” said Brian.
“But can't you see,” returned his father, “that Erica is the last girl in the world to marry a man because she was unhappy, or because she had got a difficult bit of life in front of her? Of course, if you really think she cares for you, it is different; but—”
“She does not care for me,” said Brian quickly; “but in time I think she would. I think I could make her happy.”
“Yes, I think you could, but I fancy you will make shipwreck of your hopes if you speak to her now. Have patience.”
“I am sick of patience!” cried Brian desperately. “Have I not been patient for nearly seven years? For what would you have me wait? Am I to wait till, between our injustice to secularists and their injustice to Christians, she is half badgered out of life? If she could but love me, if she would marry me now, I could save her from what must be a life of misery.”
“If I could but get you to see it from what I am convinced is Erica's point of view!” exclaimed Charles Osmond. “Forget for a minute that you are her knight and champion, and try to see things as she sees them. Let us try to reverse things. Just imagine for a minute that you are the child of some leading man, the head and chief of a party or association we'll say that you are the child of an Archbishop of Canterbury. You are carefully educated, you become a zealous worker, you enter into all your father's interests, you are able to help him in a thousand ways. But, by slow degrees, we will say that you perceive a want in the system in which you have been educated, and, after many years of careful study and thought, you are obliged to reject your former beliefs and to accept that other system which shall most recommend itself to you. We will suppose for the sake of analogy that you become a secularist. Knowing that your change of views will be a terrible grief to your father the archbishop, it takes your whole strength to make your confession, and you not only feel your father's personal pain, but you feel that his pain will be increased by his public position. To make it worse, too, we must suppose that a number of people calling themselves atheists, and in the name of atheism, have at intervals for the last thirty years been annoying and insulting your father, that in withstanding their attacks he has often received bodily injury, and that the atheists have so often driven him into the law courts that he has been pretty nearly beggared. All his privations you have shared for instance, you went with him and lived for years in a poky little lodging, and denied yourself every single luxury. But now you have, in spite of all these persecutions carried on in the name of secularism, learned to see that the highest form of secularism is true. The archbishop feels this terribly. However, being a very loving father, he wisely refuses to indulge in perpetual controversy with his child. You agree still to live together, and each try with all your might to find all the possible points of union still left you. Probably, if you are such a child as I imagine, you love your father ten times more than you did before. Then just as you have made up your mind to try to be more to him, when all you care about in life is to comfort and help him, and when your heart is much occupied with your new opinions, a friend of yours a secularist comes to you, and says: 'A miserable life lies before you. The atheists will never thoroughly take up with you while you live with your father the archbishop, and of course it is wretched for you to be surrounded by those of another creed. Come with me. I love you I will make you happy, and save you from persecution.”