Book: A Noble Life

D >> Dinah Maria Mulock Craik >> A Noble Life




Helen did not speak. Probably she too, with her clear common sense, saw
the wisdom of the thing. For as, as the earl said, he had a right to
choose his own heir--and as even the world would say, what better
heir could he choose than his next of kin--Captain Bruce's child?
What mother could resist such a prospect for her son? She sat, her
tears flowing, but still with a great light in her blue eyes, as if she
saw far away in the distance, far beyond all this sorrow and pain, the
happy future of her darling--her only child.

"Of course, Helen, I could pass you over, and leave all direct to that
young man of yours, who is, if I died intestate, my rightful heir. But
I will not--at least, not yet. Perhaps, if I live to see him of age,
I may think about making him take my name, as Bruce-Montgomerie. But
meanwhile I shall educate him, send him to school and college, and at
home he shall be put under Malcolm's care, and have ponies to ride and
boats to row. In short, Helen," concluded the earl, looking earnestly
in her face with that sad, fond, and yet peaceful expression he had, "I
mean your boy to do all that I could not do, and to be all that I ought
to have been. You are satisfied?"

"Yes--quite. I thank you. And I thank God."

A minute more, and the carriage stopped at the wicket-gate of the Manse
garden.

There stood the minister, with his white locks bared, and his whole
figure trembling with agitation, but still himself--stronger and
better than he had been for many months.

"Papa! papa!" And Helen, his own Helen, was in his arms.

"Drive on," said Lord Cairnforth, hurriedly; "Malcolm, we will go
straight to the Castle now."

And so, no one heeding him--they were too happy to notice any thing
beyond themselves--the earl passed on, with a strange smile, not of
this world at all, upon his quiet face, and returned to his own stately
and solitary home.





Chapter 14

Good Mrs. Campbell had guessed truly that from this time forward Helen
Bruce would be only a mother. Either she was one of those women in whom
the maternal element predominates--who seem born to take care of
other people and rarely to be taken care of themselves--or else her
cruel experience of married life had forever blighted in her all wifely
emotions--even wifely regrets. She was grave, sad, silent, for many
months during her early term of widowhood, but she made no pretense of
extravagant sorrow, and, except under the rarest and most necessary
circumstances, she never even named her husband. Nothing did she betray
about him, or her personal relations with him, even to her nearest and
dearest friends. He had passed away, leaving no more enduring memory
than the tomb-stone which Lord Cairnforth had erected in Grayfriars'
church-yard.

---Except his child, of whom it was the mother's undisguised delight
that, outwardly and inwardly, the little fellow appeared to be wholly a
Cardross. With his relatives on the father's side, after the one formal
letter which she had requested should be written to Colonel Bruce
announcing Captain Bruce's death, Helen evidently wished to keep up no
acquaintance whatever--nay, more than wished; she was determined it
should be so--with that quiet, resolute determination which was
sometimes seen in every feature of her strong Scotch face, once so
girlish, but it bore tokens of what she had gone through--of a battle
from which no woman ever comes out unwounded or unscarred.

But, as before said, she was a mother, and wholly a mother, which
blessed fact healed the young widow's heart better and sooner than any
thing else could have done. Besides, in her case, there was no
suspense, no conflict of duties--all her duties were done. Had they
lasted after her child's birth the struggle might have been too hard;
for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these
conflict, as they do sometimes, God help her who has to choose between
them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her
destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross
of old, in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple
round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the
minister's active and helpful daughter.

For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the
present, be recognized at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's intentions
toward herself or her son she insisted on keeping wholly secret, except,
of course, as regarded that dear and good father.

"I may die," she said to the earl--"die before yourself; and if my
boy grows up, you may not love him, or he may not deserve your love, in
which case you must choose another heir. No, you shall be bound in no
way externally; let all go on as heretofore. I will have it so."

And of all Lord Cairnforth's generosity she would accept of nothing for
herself except a small annual sum, which, with her widow's pension from
the East India Company, sufficed to make her independent of her father;
but she did not refuse kindness to her boy.

Never was there such a boy. "Boy" he was called from the first, never
"baby;" there was nothing of the baby about him. Before he was a year
old he ruled his mother, grandfather, and Uncle Duncan with a rod of
iron. Nay, the whole village were his slaves. "Miss Helen's bairn" was
a little king every where. It might have gone rather hard for the poor
wee fellow thus allegorically

"Wearing on his baby brow the round
And top of sovereignty"

That dangerous sovereignty--any human being--to wield, had there
not been at least one person who was able to assume authority over him.

This was, strange to say--and yet not strange--the Earl of
Cairnforth.

From his earliest babyhood Boy had been accustomed to the sight of the
sight of the motionless figure in the moving chair, who never touched
him, but always spoke so kindly and looked around so smilingly; whom, he
could perceive--for children are quicker to notice things than we
some times think--his mother and grandfather invariably welcomed with
such exceeding pleasure, and treated with never-failing respect and
tenderness. And, as soon as he could crawl, the footboard of the
mysterious wheeled chair became to the little man a perfect
treasure-house of delight. Hidden there he found toys, picture-books,
"sweeties"--such as he got nowhere else, and for which, before
appropriating them, he was carefully taught to express thanks in his own
infantile way, and made to understand fully from whom they came.

"It's bribery, and against my principles," the earl would say, half
sadly. "But, if I did not give him things, how else could Boy learn to
love me?"

Helen never answered this, no more than she used answer many similar
speeches in the earl's childhood. She knew time would prove them all to
be wrong.

What sort of idea the child really had of this wonderful donor, the
source of most of his pleasures, who yet was so different externally
from every body else; who never moved from the wheel-chair; who neither
caressed him nor played with him, and whom he was not allowed to play
with, but only lifted up sometimes to kiss softly the kind face which
always smiled down upon him with a sort of "superior love"--what the
child's childish notion of his friend was no one could of course
discover. But it must have been a mingling of awe and affectionateness;
for he would often--even before he could walk--crawl up to the
little chair, steady himself by it, and then look into Lord Cairnforth's
face with those mysterious baby eyes, full of questioning, but yet
without the slightest fear. And once, when his mother was teaching him
his first hymn--

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child,"

Boy startled her by the sudden remark--one of the divine profanities
that are often falling from the innocent lips of little children--

"I know Jesus. He is the earl."

And then Helen tried, in some simple way, to make the child understand
about Lord Cairnforth, and how he had been all his life so heavily
afflicted; but Boy could not comprehend it as affliction at all. There
seemed to him something not inferior, but superior to all other people
in that motionless figure, with its calm sweet face--who was never
troubled, never displeased--whom every body delighted to obey, and at
whose feet lay treasures untold.

"I think Boy likes me," Lord Cairnforth would say, when he met the
upturned beaming face as the child, in an ecstasy of expectation, ran to
meet him. "His love may last as long as the playthings do."

But the earl was mistaken, as Helen knew. His love-victory had been in
something deeper than toys and "goodies." Even when their charm began
to cease Boy still crept up to the little chair, and looked from the
empty footboard up to the loving face, which no one, man, woman, or
child, ever regarded without something far higher than pity.

And, by degrees, Boy, or "Carr"--which, as being the diminutive for
his second Christian name, Cardross, he was often called now--found a
new attraction in his friend. He would listen with wide-open eyes, and
attention that never flagged, to the interminable "tories" which the
earl told him, out of the same brilliant imagination which had once used
to delight his uncles in the boat. And so, little by little, the child
and the man grew to be "a pair of friends"--familiar and fond, but
with a certain tender reverence always between them, which had the most
salutary effect on the younger.

Whenever he was sick, or sorry, or naughty--and Master "Boy" could
be exceedingly naughty sometimes--the voice which had most influence
over him, the influence to which he always succumbed, came from the
little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there--no dark looks
or sharp tones--but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm
will which never passed over a single fault, or yielded to a single
whim. In his wildest passions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary
to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and
many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case
was weakened by occasional over-indulgence and by an almost morbid
terror of the results of the same, failed to conquer the child, Helen
used, as a last resource, to bring him in her arms, set him down beside
Lord Cairnforth, and leave him there. She never came back but she found
Boy "good".

"He makes me good, too, I think," the earl would say now and then, "for
he makes me happy."

It was true. Lord Cairnforth never looked otherwise than happy when he
had beside him that little blossom of hope of the new generation--
Helen's child.

As years went by, though he still lived alone at the Castle, it was by
no means the secluded life of his youth and early manhood. He gradually
gathered about him neighbors and friends. He filled his house
occasionally with guests, of his own rank and of all ranks; people
notable and worthy to be known. He became a "patron," as they called it
in those days, of art and literature, and assembled around him all who,
for his pleasure and their own benefit, chose to enjoy his hospitality.

In a quiet way, for he disliked public show, he was likewise what was
termed a "philanthropist," but always on the system which he had learned
in his boyhood from Helen and Mr. Cardross, that "charity begins at
home;" with the father who guides well his own household; the minister
whose footstep is welcomed at every door in his own parish; the
proprietor whose just, wise, and merciful rule make him sovereign
absolute in his own estate. This last especially was the character
given along all the country-side to the Earl of Cairnforth.

His was not a sad existence; far from it. None who knew him, and
certainly none who ever staid long with him in his own home, went away
with that impression. He enjoyed what he called "a sunshiny life"--
having sunshiny faces about him; people who knew how to accept the sweet
and endure the bitter; to see the heavenly side even of sorrow; to do
good to all, and receive good from all; avoiding all envies, jealousies,
angers, and strifes, and following out literally the apostolic command,
"As much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men."

And so the earl was, in the best sense of the word, popular. Every body
liked him, and he liked every body. But deep in his heart--ay,
deeper than any of these his friends and acquaintance ever dreamed--
steadying and strengthening it, keeping it warm for all human uses, yet
calm with the quiet sadness of an eternal want, lay all those emotions
which are not likings, but loves; not sympathies, but passions; but
which with him were to be, in this world, forever dormant and
unfulfilled.

Never, let the Castle be ever so full of visitors, or let his daily
cares, his outward interest, and his innumerable private charities be
ever so great, did he omit driving over twice or thrice a week to spend
an hour or two at the Manse--in winter, by the study fire; in summer,
under the shade of the green elm-trees--the same trees where he had
passed that first sunny Sunday when he came a poor, lonely, crippled
orphan child into the midst of the large, merry family--all scattered
now.

The minister, Helen, and Boy were the sole inmates left at the Manse,
and of these three the latter certainly was the most important. Hide it
as she would, the principal object of the mother's life was her only
child. Many a time, as Lord Cairnforth sat talking with her, after his
old fashion, of all his interests, schemes, labors, and hopes--hopes
solely for others, and labors, the end of which he knew he would never
see--he would smile to himself, noticing how Helen's eye wandered all
the while--wandered to where that rosy young scapegrace rode his tiny
pony--the earl's gift--up and down the gravel walks, or played at
romps with Malcolm, or dug holes in the flower-beds, or got into all and
sundry of the countless disgraces which were forever befalling Boy; yet
which, so lovable was the little fellow, were as continually forgiven,
and, behind his back, even exalted into something very like merits.

But once--and it was an incident which, whether or not Mrs. Bruce
forgot it herself, her friend never did, since it furnished a key to
much of the past, and a serious outlook for the future--Boy committed
an error which threw his mother into an agony of agitation such as she
had not betrayed since she came back, a widow, to Cairnforth.

Her little son told a lie! It was a very small lie, such as dozens of
children tell--are punished and pardoned--but a lie it was. It
happened on August morning, when the raspberries for which the Manse was
famous. He was desired not to touch them--"not to lay a finger on
them," insisted the mother. And he promised. But, alas! The promises
of four years old are not absolutely reliable; and so that which
happened once in a more ancient garden happened in the garden of the
Manse. Boy plucked and ate. He came back to his mother with his white
pinafore all marked and his red mouth redder still with condemnatory
stains. Yet, when asked "if he had touched the raspberries," he opened
that wicked mouth and said, unblushingly, "No!"

Of course it was an untruth--self-evident; in its very simplicity
almost amusing; but the earl was not prepared for the effect it seemed
to have upon Helen. She started back, her lips actually blanched and
her eyes glowing.

"My son has told a lie!" she cried, and kept repeating it over and over
again. "My son has looked me in the face and told me a lie--his
first lie!"

"Hush, Helen!" for her manner seemed actually to frighten the child.

"No, I can not pass it over! I dare not! He must be punished. Come!"

She seized Boy by the hand, looking another way, and was moving off with
him, as if she hardly knew what she was doing.

"Helen!" called the earl, almost reproachfully; for, in his opinion, out
of all comparison with the offense seemed the bitterness with which the
mother felt it, and was about to punish it. "Tell me, first, what are
you going to do with the child?"

"I hardly know--I must think--must pray. What if my son, my only
son, should inherit--I mean, if he should grow up a liar?"

That word "inherit" betrayed her. No wonder now at the mother's agony
of fear--she who was mother to Captain Bruce's son. Lord Cairnforth
guessed it all.

"I understand," said he. "But--"

"No," Helen interrupted, "you need understand nothing, for I have told
you nothing. Only I must kill the sin--the fatal sin--at the very
root. I must punish him. Come, child!"

"Come back, Helen," said the earl; and something in the tone made her
obey at once, as occasionally during her life Helen had been glad to
obey him, and creep under the shelter of a stronger will and clearer
judgment than her own. "You are altogether mistaken, my dear friend.
Your boy is only a child, and errs as such, and you treat him as if he
had sinned like a grown-up man. Be reasonable. We will both take care
of him. No fear that he will turn out a liar!"

Helen hesitated; but still her looks were so angry and stern, all the
mother vanished out of them, that the boy, instead of clinging to her,
ran away crying, and hid himself behind Lord Cairnforth's chair.

"Leave him to me, Helen. Can not you trust me--me--with your
son!"

Mrs. Bruce paused.

"Now," said the earl, wheeling himself round a little, so that he came
face to face with the sobbing child, "lift up your head, Boy, and speak
the truth like a man to me and to your mother--see! She is listening.
Did you touch those raspberries?"

"No!"

"Cardross!" Calling him by his rarely-spoken name, not his pet-name, and
fixing upon him eyes, not angry, but clear and searching, that compelled
the truth even from a child, "think again. You must tell us!"

"No, me didn't touch them," answered Boy, dropping his head in conscious
shame. "Not with me fingers. Me just opened me mouth and they popped
in."

Lord Cairnforth could hardly help smiling at the poor little sinner--
the infant Jesuit attaining his object by such an ingenious device; but
the mother didn't smile, and her look was harder than ever.

"You hear! If not a lie, it was a prevarication. He who lies is a
scoundrel, but he who prevaricates is a scoundrel and coward too.
Sooner than Boy should grow up like--like that, I would rather die.
No, I would rather see him die; for I might come in time to hate my own
son."

By these fierce words, and by the gleaming eyes, which made a sudden and
total change in the subdued manner, and the plain, almost elderly face
under the widow's cap that Helen always wore, Lord Cairnforth guessed,
more than he had ever guessed before, of what the sufferings of her
married life had been.

"My friend," he said, and there was infinite pity as well as tenderness
in his voice, "believe me, you are wrong. You are foreboding what,
please God, will never happen. God does not deal with us in that
manner. He bids us do His will, each of us individually, without
reference to the doings or misdoings of any other person. And if we
obey Him, I believe He takes care we shall not suffer--at least not
forever, even in this world. Do not be afraid. Boy," calling the
little fellow, who was now sobbing in bitterest contrition behind the
wheeled chair, "come and kiss your mother. Promise her that you will
never again vex her by telling a lie."

"No, no, no. Me'll not vex mamma. Good mamma! Pretty mamma! Boy so
sorry!"

And he clung closely and passionately to his mother, kissing her averted
face twenty times over.

"You see, Helen, you need not fear," said the earl.

Helen burst into tears.

After that day it came to be a general rule that, when she could not
manage him herself, which not infrequently happened--for the very
similarity in temperament and disposition between the mother and son
made their conflicts, even at this early age, longer and harder--Helen
brought Boy up to the Castle and left him, sometimes for hours together,
in the library with Lord Cairnforth. He always came home to the Manse
quiet and "good."

And so out of babyhood into boyhood, and thence into youth, grew the
earl's adopted son; for practically it became that relationship, though
no distinct explanation was ever given, or any absolute information
vouchsafed, for indeed there was none who had a right to inquire; still,
the neighborhood and the public at large took it for granted that such
were Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward his little cousin.

As for the boy's mother, she led a life very retired--more retired
than even Helen Cardross, doing all her duties as the minister's
daughter, but seldom appearing in society. And society speculated
little about her. Sometimes, when the Castle was full of guests, Mrs.
Bruce appeared among them, still in her widow's weeds, to be received by
Lord Cairnforth with marked attention and respect--always called "my
cousin," and whoever was present, invariably requested to take the head
of his table; but, except at these occasional seasons, and at birthdays,
new years, and so on, Helen was seldom seen out of the Manse, and was
very little known to the earl's ordinary acquaintance.

But every body in the whole peninsula knew the minister's grandson,
young Master Bruce. The boy was tall of his age--not exactly
handsome, being too like his mother for that; nevertheless, the
robustness of form, which in her was too large for comeliness, became in
him only manly size and strength. He was athletic, graceful, and
active; he learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk; and, under
Malcolm's charge, was early initiated in all the mysteries of moor and
loch. By fourteen years of age Cardross Bruce was the best shot, the
best fisher, the best hand at an oar, of all the young lads in the
neighborhood.

Then, too, though allowed to run rather wild, he was unmistakably a
gentleman. Though he mixed freely with every body in the parish, he was
neither haughty nor over-familiar with any one. He had something of the
minister's manner with inferiors--frank, gentle, and free--winning
both trust and love, and yet it was impossible to take liberties with
him. And some of the elder people in the clachan declared the lad had
at times just "the merry glint o' the minister's e'en" when Mr. Cardross
first came to the parish as a young man with his young wife.

He was an old man now, "wearin' awa'," but slowly and peacefully;
preaching still, though less regularly; for, to his great delight, his
son Duncan, having come out creditably at college, had been appointed
his assistant and successor. Uncle Duncan--only twelve years his
nephew's senior--was also appointed by Lord Cairnforth tutor to "Boy"
Bruce. The two were very good friends, and not unlike one another.
"Ay, he's just a Cardross," was the universal remark concerning young
Bruce. No one had ever hinted that the lad was like his father.

He was not. Nature seemed mercifully to have forgotten to perpetuate
that type of character which had given Mr. Menteith formerly, and others
since, such a justifiable dread of the Bruce family, and such a
righteous determination to escape them. Lord Cairnforth still paid the
annuity, but on condition that no one of his father's kindred should
ever interfere, in the smallest degree, with Helen's child.

This done, both he and she trusted to the strong safeguards of habit and
education, and all other influences which so strongly modify character,
to make the boy all that they desired him to be, and to counteract those
tendencies which, as Lord Cairnforth plainly perceived, were Helen's
daily dread. It was a struggle, mysterious as that which visible human
free-will is forever opposing (apparently) to invisible fate, the end of
which it is impossible to see, and yet we struggle on.

Thus laboring together with one hope, one aim, and one affection, all
centered in this boy, Lord Cairnforth and Mrs. Bruce passed many a
placid year. And when the mother's courage failed her--when her
heart shrank in apprehension from real terrors or from chimeras of her
own creating, her friend taught her to fold patiently her trembling
hands, and say, as she herself and the minister had first taught him in
his forlorn boyhood, the one only prayer which calms fear and comforts
sorrow--the lesson of the earl's whole life--"Thy will be done!"





Chapter 15

"Helen, that boy of yours ought to be sent to college."

"Oh no! Surely you do not think it necessary?" said Helen, visibly
shrinking.

She and Lord Cairnforth were sitting together in the Castle library.
Young Cardross had been sitting beside them, holding a long argument
with his mother, as he often did, for he was of a decidedly
argumentative turn of mind, until, getting the worst of the battle, and
being rather "put down"--a position rarely agreeable to the
self-esteem of eighteen--he had flushed up angrily, made no reply,
but opened one of the low windows and leaped out on the terrace. There,
pacing to and fro along the countess's garden, they saw the boy, or
rather young man, for he looked like one now. He moved with a rapid
step, the wind tossing his fair curls--Helen's curls over again--
and cooling his cheeks as he tried to recover his temper, which he did
not often lose, especially in the earl's presence.

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