It is only my body.Your arm round me makes me so strong! Let me lay my head on your shoulder.'
A brief pause followed.
'But, Eric,' said Mary's voice, 'there is one that loves you better than I do.'
'If there is,' returned Ericson, feebly, 'he has sent his angel to deliver me.'
'But you do believe in him, Eric?'
The voice expressed anxiety no less than love.
'I am going to see.There is no other way.When I find him, Ishall believe in him.I shall love him with all my heart, I know.
I love the thought of him now.'
'But that's not himself, my--darling!' she said.
'No.But I cannot love himself till I find him.Perhaps there is no Jesus.'
'Oh, don't say that.I can't bear to hear you talk so,'
'But, dear heart, if you're so sure of him, do you think he would turn me away because I don't do what I can't do? I would if I could with all my heart.If I were to say I believed in him, and then didn't trust him, I could understand it.But when it's only that I'm not sure about what I never saw, or had enough of proof to satisfy me of, how can he be vexed at that? You seem to me to do him great wrong, Mary.Would you now banish me for ever, if Ishould, when my brain is wrapped in the clouds of death, forget you along with everything else for a moment?'
'No, no, no.Don't talk like that, Eric, dear.There may be reasons, you know.'
'I know what they say well enough.But I expect Him, if there is a Him, to be better even than you, my beautiful--and I don't know a fault in you, but that you believe in a God you can't trust.If Ibelieved in a God, wouldn't I trust him just? And I do hope in him.
We'll see, my darling.When we meet again I think you'll say I was right.'
Robert stood like one turned into marble.Deep called unto deep in his soul.The waves and the billows went over him.
Mary St.John answered not a word.I think she must have been conscience-stricken.Surely the Son of Man saw nearly as much faith in Ericson as in her.Only she clung to the word as a bond that the Lord had given her: she would rather have his bond.
Ericson had another fit of coughing.Robert heard the rustling of ministration.But in a moment the dying man again took up the word.
He seemed almost as anxious about Mary's faith as she was about his.
'There's Robert,' he said: 'I do believe that boy would die for me, and I never did anything to deserve it.Now Jesus Christ must be as good as Robert at least.I think he must be a great deal better, if he's Jesus Christ at all.Now Robert might be hurt if I didn't believe in him.But I've never seen Jesus Christ.It's all in an old book, over which the people that say they believe in it the most, fight like dogs and cats.I beg your pardon, my Mary; but they do, though the words are ugly.'
'Ah! but if you had tried it as I've tried it, you would know better, Eric.'
'I think I should, dear.But it's too late now.I must just go and see.There's no other way left.'
The terrible cough came again.As soon as the fit was over, with a grand despair in his heart, Robert went from behind the screen.
Ericson was on a couch.His head lay on Mary St.John's bosom.
Neither saw him.
'Perhaps,' said Ericson, panting with death, 'a kiss in heaven may be as good as being married on earth, Mary.'
She saw Robert and did not answer.Then Eric saw him.He smiled;but Mary grew very pale.
Robert came forward, stooped and kissed Ericson's forehead, kneeled and kissed Mary's hand, rose and went out.
>From that moment they were both dead to him.Dead, I say--not lost, not estranged, but dead--that is, awful and holy.He wept for Eric.
He did not weep for Mary yet.But he found a time.
Ericson died two days after.
Here endeth Robert's youth.