Book: A Noble Life

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




Experience had not effaced the first mysterious impression made on the
little child's mind by the wheeled chair and its occupant. If there was
one person in the world who had power to guide and control this
high-spirited lad, it was Lord Cairnforth. And as the latter moved his
chair a little round, so that he could more easily look out into the
garden and see the graceful figure sauntering among the flower-beds, it
was evident by his expression that the earl loved Helen's boy very
dearly.

"He is a fine fellow, and a good fellow as ever was born, that young man
of yours. Still, as I have told you many a time, he would be all the
better if he were sent to college."

"For his education?" I thought Duncan was fully competent to complete
that."

"Not altogether. But, for many reasons, I think it would be advisable
for him to go from home for a while."

"Why? Because his mother spoils him?"

The earl smiled, and gave no direct answer. In truth, the harm Helen
did her boy was not so much in her "spoiling"--love rarely injures
--as in the counteracting weight which she sometimes threw on the
other side--in the sudden tight rein which she drew upon his little
follies and faults--the painful clashing of two equally strong wills,
which sometimes happened between the mother and the son.

This was almost inevitable, with Helen's peculiar character. As she sat
there, the sun shining on her fair face--still fair; a clear, healthy
red and white, though she was over forty--you might trace some harsh
lines in it, and see clearly that, save for her exceeding unselfishness
and lovingness of disposition, Mrs. Bruce might in middle age have grown
into what is termed a "hard" woman; capable of passionate affection, but
of equally passionate severity, and prone to exercise both alike upon
the beings most precious to her on earth.

"I fear it is not a pleasant doctrine to preach to mothers," said Lord
Cairnforth; "but, Helen, all boys ought to leave home some time. How
else are they to know the world?"

"I do not wish my boy to know the world."

"But he must. He ought. Remember his life is likely to be a very
different one from either yours or mine."

"Do not let us think of that," said Helen, uneasily.

"My friend, I have been thinking of it ever since he was born--or, at
least, ever since he came to Cairnforth. That day seems almost like
yesterday, and yet--We are growing quite middle-aged folk, Helen, my
dear."

Helen sighed. These peaceful, uneventful years, how fast they had
slipped by! She began to count them after the only fashion by which she
cared to count any thing now. "Yes, Cardross will be a man--actually
and legally a man--in little more than two years."

"That is just what I was considering. By that time we must come to some
decision on a subject which you will never let me speak of; but by-and
by, Helen, you must. Do you suppose that your son guesses, or that any
body has ever told him, what his future position is to be?"

"I think not. There was nobody to tell him, for nobody knew. No,"
continued Helen, speaking strongly and decidedly, "I am determined on
one point--nothing shall bind you as regards my son or me--
nothing, except your own free will. To talk of me as your successor is
idle. I am older than you are; and you must not be compromised as
regards my son. He is a good boy now, but temptation is strong, and,"
with an irrepressible shudder, "appearances are deceitful sometimes.
Wait, as I have always said--wait till you see what sort of man
Cardross turns out to be."

Lord Cairnforth made no reply, and once more the two friends sat
watching the unconscious youth, who had been for so many years the one
object of both their lives.

"Ignorance is not innocence," said the earl at length, after along fit
of musing. "If you bind a creature mortally hand and foot, how can it
ever learn to walk? It would, as soon as you loosed the bonds, find
itself not free, but paralyzed--as helpless a creature as myself."

Helen turned away from watching her boy, and laid her hand tenderly, in
her customary caress, on the feeble hand, which yet had been the means
of accomplishing so much.

"You should not speak so," she said. "Scarcely ever is there a more
useful life than yours."

"More useful, certainly, than any one once expected--except you,
Helen. I have tried to make you not ashamed of me these thirty years."
"Is it so many? Thirty years since the day you first came to the
Manse?"

"Yes; you know I was forty last birthday. Who would have thought my
life would have lasted so long? But it can not last forever; and before
I am 'away' as your dear old father would say, I should like to leave
you quite settled and happy about that boy."

"Who says I am not happy?" answered Mrs. Bruce, rather sharply.

"Nobody; but I see it myself sometimes--when you get that restless,
anxious look--there it is now! Helen, I must have it away. I think
it would trouble me in my grave if I left you unhappy," added the earl,
regarding her with that expression of yearning tenderness which she had
been so used to all her days that she rarely noticed it until the days
came when she saw it no more.

"I am not unhappy," she said, earnestly. "Why should I be? My dear
father keeps well still--he enjoys a green old age. And is not my
son growing up every thing that a mother's heart could desire?"

"I do believe it. Cardross is a good boy--a very good boy. But the
metal has never been tested--as the soundest metal always requires to
be--and until this is done, you will never rest. I had rather it
were done during my lifetime than afterward. Helen, I particularly wish
the boy to go to college."

The earl spoke so decidedly that Mrs. Bruce replied with only the brief
question "Where?"

"To Edinburg; because there he would not be left quite alone. His uncle
Alick would keep an eye upon him, and he could be boarded with Mrs.
Menteith, whose income would be none the worse for the addition I would
make to it; for of course, Helen, if he goes, it must be--not exactly
as my declared heir, since you dislike that so much, but--as my
cousin and nearest of kin, which he is undeniably."

Helen acquiesced in silence.

"I have a right to him, you see," said Lord Cairnforth, smiling, "and
really I am rather proud of my young fellow. He may not be very clever
--the minister says he is not--but he is what I call a man. Like
his mother, who never was clever, but yet was every inch a woman--the
best woman, in all relations of life, that I ever knew."

Helen smiled too--a little sadly, perhaps--but soon her mind
recurred from all other things to her one prominent thought.

"And what would you do with the boy himself? He knows nothing of money
--has never had a pound-note in his pocket all his life."

"Then it is high time he should have--and a good many of them. I
shall pay Mrs. Menteith well for his board, but I shall make him a
sufficient allowance besides. He must stand on his own feet, without
any one to support him. It is the only way to make a boy into a man--
a man that is worth anything. Do you not see that yourself?"

"I see, Lord Cairnforth, that you think it would be best for my boy to
be separated from his mother."

She spoke in a hurt tone, and yet with a painful consciousness that what
she said was not far off the truth, more especially as the earl did not
absolutely deny the accusation.

"I think, my dear Helen, that it would be better if he were separated
from us all for a time. We are such quiet, old-fashioned folks at
Cairnforth, he may come to weary of us, you know. But my strongest
motive is exactly what I stated--that he should be left to himself,
to feel his own strength and the strength of those principles which we
have tried to give him--that any special character he possesses may
have free space to develop itself. Up to a certain point we can take
care of our children; beyond, we can not--nay, we ought not; they
must take care of themselves. I believe--do not be angry, Helen--
but I believe there comes a time in every boy's life when the wisest
thing even his mother can do for him is--to leave him alone."

"And not watch over him--not to guide him?"

"Yes, but not so as to vex him by the watching and the guiding.
However, we will talk of this another day. Here the lad comes."

And the earl's eyes brightened almost as much as Helen's did when
Cardross leaped in at the window, all his good-humor restored, kissed
his mother in his rough, fond way, of which he was not in the least
ashamed as yet, and sat down by the wheeled chair with that tender
respectfulness and involuntary softening of manner and tone which he
never failed to show Lord Cairnforth, and had never shown so much to any
other human being.

Ay, the earl had his compensations. We all have, if we know it.

Gradually, in many a long, quiet talk, during which she listened to his
reasonings as probably she would have listened to no other man's, he
contrived to reconcile Mrs. Bruce to the idea of parting with her boy
--their first separation, even for a day, since Cardross was born. It
was neither for very long nor very far, since civilization had now
brought Edinburg within a few hours' journey of Cairnforth; but it was
very sore, nevertheless, to both mother and son.

Helen took her boy and confided him to Mrs. Menteith herself; but she
could not be absent for more than one day, for just about this time her
father's "green old age" began to fail a little, and he grew extremely
dependent upon her, which, perhaps, was the best thing that could have
happened to her at this crisis. She had to assume that tenderest,
happiest duty of being "nursing mother" to the second childhood of one
who throughout her own childhood, youth, and middle age had been to her
every thing that was honored and deserving honor--loving, and worthy
of love--in a parent.

Not that Mr. Cardross had sank into any helpless state of mind or body;
the dread of paralysis had proved a false alarm; and Helen's coming
home, to remain there forever, together with the thoroughly peaceful
life which he had since lived for so many years, had kept up the old
man's vitality to a surprising extent. His life was now only fading
away by slow and insensible degrees, like the light out of the sunset
clouds, or the colors from the mountains--silent warnings of the
night coming "in which no man can work."

The minister had worked all his days--his Master's work; none the
less worthy that it was done in no public manner, and had met with no
public reward. Beyond his own Presbytery the name of the Reverend
Alexander Cardross was scarcely known. He was not a popular preacher;
he had never published a book, nor even a sermon, and he had taken no
part in the theological controversies of the time. He was content to
let other men fight about Christianity; he only lived it, spending
himself for naught, some might think, in his own country parish and
among his poor country people, the pastor and father of them all.

He had never striven after this world's good things, and they never came
to him in any great measure; but better things did. He always had
enough, and a little to spare for those who had less. In his old age
this righteous man was not "forsaken," and his seed never "begged their
bread." His youngest, Duncan, was always beside him, and yearly his
four other sons came to visit him from the various places where they had
settled themselves, to labor, and prosper, and transmit honorably to
another generation the honest name of Cardross.

For the minister's "ae dochter," she was, as she had been always, his
right hand, watching him, tending him, helping and guarding him,
expending her whole life for him, so as to make him feel as lightly as
possible the gradual decay of his own; above all, loving him with a love
that made labor easy and trouble light--the passionately devoted love
which we often see sons show to mothers, and daughters to fathers, when
they have never had the parental ideal broke, nor been left to wander
through life in a desolation which is only second to that of being
"without God in the world."

"I think he has a happy old age--the dear old father!" said Helen one
day, when she and Lord Cairnforth sat talking, while the minister was as
usual absorbed in the library--the great Cairnforth library, now
becoming notable all over Scotland, of which Mr. Cardross had had the
sole arrangement, and every book therein the earl declared he loved as
dearly as he did his children.

"Yes, he is certainly happy. And he has had a happy life, too--more
so than most people."

"He deserved it. All these seventy-five years he has kept truth on his
lips, and honor and honesty in his heart. He has told no man a lie; has
overreached and deceived no man; and, though he was poor--poor
always; when he married my mother, exceedingly poor--he has
literally, from that day to this, 'owed no man any thing but to love one
another.' Oh!" cried Helen, looking after the old man in almost a
passion of tenderness, "oh that my son may grow up like his grandfather!
Like nobody else--only his grandfather."

"I think he will," answered Lord Cairnforth.

And, in truth, the accounts they had of young Cardross were for some
time extremely satisfactory. He had accommodated himself to his new
life--had taken kindly to his college work; gave no trouble to Mrs.
Menteith, and still less to his uncle; the latter a highly respectable
but not very interesting gentleman--a partner in the firm of Menteith
and Ross, and lately married to the youngest Miss Menteith.

Still, by his letters, the nephew did not seem overwhelmingly fond of
him, complaining sometimes that Uncle Alick interfered with him a little
too much; investigated his expenses, made him balance his accounts, and
insisted that these should be kept within the limits suitable for Mrs.
Bruce's son and Mr. Cardross's grandson, who would have to work his way
in the world as his uncles had done before him.

"You see, Helen," said the earl, "all concealment brings its
difficulties. It would be much easier for the boy if he were told his
position and his future career at once--nay, if he had known it from
the first."

But Helen would not hear of this. She was obstinate, all but fierce, on
the subject. No argument would convince her that it was not safer for
her son, who had been brought up in such Arcadian simplicity, to
continue believing himself what he appeared to be, than to be dazzled by
the knowledge that he was the chosen heir of the Earl of Cairnforth.

So, somewhat against his judgment, the earl yielded.

All winter and spring things went on peacefully in the little peninsula,
which was now being grasped tightly by the strong arm of encroaching
civilization. Acre after acre of moorland disappeared, and became
houses, gardens, green-houses, the feu-rents of which made the estate of
Cairnforth more valuable every year.

"That young man of yours will have enough on his hands one day," the
earl said to Helen. "He lives an easy life now, and little thinks what
hard work he is coming to. As Mr. Menteith once told me, the owner of
Cairnforth has no sinecure, nor will have for the next quarter of a
century."

"You expect a busy life, then?"

"Yes; and I must have that boy to help me--till he comes to his own.
But, Helen, after that time, you must not let him be idle. The richest
man should work, if he can. I wonder what line of work Cardross will
take; whether he will attempt politics--his letters are very
political just now, do you notice?"

"Very. And there is not half enough about himself."

"He might get into Parliament," continued the earl, "and perhaps some
day win a peerage in his own right. Eh, Helen? Would you like to be
mother to a viscount--Viscount Cairnforth?"

"No," said Helen, tenderly, "there shall never be another Lord
Cairnforth."

Thus sat these two, planning by the hour together the future of the boy
who was their one delight. It amused them through all the winter and
spring, till Cairnforth woods grew green again, and Loch Beg recovered
its smile of sunshiny peace, and the hills at the head of it took their
summer colors, lovely and calm, even as, year after year, these friends
had watched them throughout their two lives, of which both were now
keenly beginning to feel the greater part lay, not before them, but
behind. But in thinking of this boy they felt young again, as if he
brought to one the hope, to the other the faint recollection of
happiness that in the great mystery of Providence to each had been
personally denied.

And yet they were not unhappy. Helen was not. No one could look into
her face--strongly marked, but rosy-complexioned, health, and comely
--the sort of large comeliness which belongs to her peculiar type of
Scotch women, especially in their middle age--without seeing that
life was to her not only duty, but enjoyment--ay, in spite of the
widow's cap, which marked her out as one who permanently belonged and
meant to belong only to her son.

And the earl, though he was getting to look old--older than Helen did
--for his black curls were turning gray, and the worn and withered
features, contrasting with the small childish figure, gave him a weird
sort of aspect that struck almost painfully at first upon strangers,
still Lord Cairnforth preserved the exceeding sweetness and peacefulness
of expression which had made his face so beautiful as a boy, and so
winning as a young man.

"He'll ne'er be an auld man," sometimes said the folk about Cairnforth,
shaking their heads as they looked after him, and speculating for how
many years the feeble body would hold out. Also, perhaps--for
self-interest is bound up in the heart of every human being--feeling
a little anxiety as to who should come after him, to be lord and ruler
over them; perhaps to be less loved, less honored--more so none could
possibly be.

It was comfort to those who loved him then, and far more comfort
afterward to believe--nay, to know for certain--that many a man,
absorbed in the restless struggle of this busy world, prosperous
citizen, husband and father, had, on the whole, led a far less happy
life than the Earl of Cairnforth.





Chapter 16

One mild, sunny autumn day, when Cardross, having ended his first
session at college, had spent apparently with extreme enjoyment his
first vacation at home, and had just gone back again to Edinburg to
commence his second "year," the Earl of Cairnforth drove down to the
Manse, as he now did almost daily, for the minister was growing too
feeble to come to the Castle very often.

His old pupil found him sitting in the garden, sunning himself in a
sheltered nook, backed by a goodly show of China roses and fuchsias,
and companioned by two or three volumes of Greek plays, in which,
however, he did not read much. He looked up with pleasure at the sound
of the wheeled chair along the gravel walk.

"I'm glad you are come," said he. "I'm sorely needing somebody, for I
have scarcely seen Helen all the morning. There she is! My lassie,
where have you been these three hours?"

Helen put off his question in some gentle manner, and took her place
beside her charge, or rather between her two charges, each helpless in
their way, though the one most helpless once was least so now.

"Helen, something is wrong with you this morning?" said the earl, when,
Mr. Cardross having gone away for his little daily walk up and down
between the garden and the kirk-yard, they two sat by themselves for a
while.

Mrs. Bruce made no answer.

"Nothing can be amiss with your boy, for I had a letter from him only
yesterday."

"I had one this morning."

"And what does he say to you? To me little enough, merely complaining
how dull he finds Edinburg now, and wishing he were back again among us
all."

"I do not wonder," said Helen, in a hard tone, and with that hard
expression which sometimes came over her face: the earl knew it well.

"Helen, I am certain something is very wrong with you. Why do you not
tell it out to me?"

"Hush! Here comes my father!"

And she hurried to him, gave him her arm, and helped his feeble steps
back into the house, where for some time they three remained talking
together about the little chit-chat of the parish, and the news of the
family, in its various ramifications, now extending year by year. Above
all, the minister like to hear and to talk about his eldest and favorite
grandchild--his name-child, too--Alexander Cardross Bruce.

But on this subject, usually the never-ceasing topic at the Manse, Helen
was for once profoundly silent. Even when her father had dropped
asleep, as in his feebleness of age he frequently did in the very midst
of conversation, she sat restlessly fingering her wedding-ring, and
another which she wore as a sort of guard to it, the only jewel she
possessed. It was a very large diamond, set in a plain hoop of gold.
The earl had given it to her a few months after she came back to
Cairnforth, when her persistent refusal of all his offered kindnesses
had almost produced a breach between them--at least the nearest
approach to a quarrel they had ever known. She, seeing how deeply she
had wounded him, had accepted this ring as a pledge of amity, and had
worn it ever since--by his earnest request--until it had become as
familiar to her finger as the one beside it. But now she kept looking
at it, and taking it off and on with a troubled air.

"I am going to ask you a strange question, Lord Cairnforth--a rude
one, if you and I were not such old friends that we do not mind any
thing we say to one another."

"Say on."

"Is this ring of mine very valuable?"

"Rather so."

"Worth how much?"

"You certainly are rude, Helen," replied the earl, with a smile. "Well,
if you particularly wish to know, I believe it is worth two hundred
pounds."

"Two hundred pounds!"

"Was that so alarming? How many times must I suggest that a man may do
what he likes with his own? It was mine--that is, my mother's, and I
gave it to you. I hope you are worth to me at least two hundred
pounds."

But no cheerfulness removed the settled cloud from Mrs. Bruce's face.

"Now--answer me--you know, Helen, you always answer me candidly
and truly, what makes you put that question about the ring?"

"Because I wished to sell it."

"Sell it! why?"

"I want money; in fact, I must have money--a good large sum," said
Helen, in exceeding agitation. "And as I will neither beg, borrow, not
steal, I must sell something to procure that sum, and this diamond is
the only thing I have to sell. Now you comprehend?"

"I think I do," was the grave answer. "My poor Helen!"

She might have held out, but the tenderness of his tone overcame her.
She turned her head away.

"Oh, it's bitter, bitter! After all these years!"

"What is bitter? But you need not tell me. I think I can guess. You
did not show me your boy's letter of this morning."

"There it is!"

And the poor mother, with her tears fast flowing--they had been
restrained so long that now they burst out like a tide--gave way to
that heart-break which many a mother has had to endure--the discovery
that her son was not the perfect being she had thought him; that he was
no better than other women's sons, and equally liable to fall away.
Poor Cardross had been doing all sorts of wrong and foolish things,
which he had kept to himself as long as he could, as long as he dared,
and then had come, in an agony of penitence, and poured out the whole
story of his errors and his miseries into his mother's bosom.

They were, happily, only errors, not sins--extravagancies in dress;
amusements and dissipations, resulting in serious expenses; but the
young fellow had done nothing absolutely wicked. In the strongest
manner, and with the most convincing evidence to back it, he protested
this and promised to amend his ways, to "turn over a new leaf," if only
his mother would forgive him, and find means to pay the heap of bills
which he enclosed, and which amounted to much more than would be covered
by his yearly allowance from the earl.

"Poor lad!" said Lord Cairnforth, as he read the letter twice over, and
then carefully examined the list of debts it enclosed. "A common
story."

"I know that," cried Helen, passionately. "But oh! That it should have
happened to my son!"

And she bowed her face upon her hands, and swayed herself to and fro in
the bitterest grief and humiliation.

The earl regarded her a little while, and then said, gently, "My friend,
are you not making for yourself a heavy burden out of a very light
matter?"

"A light matter? But you do not see--you can not understand."

"I think I can."

"It is not so much the thing itself--the fact of my son's being so
mean, so dishonest as to run into debt, when he knows I hate it--that
I have cause to hate it, and to shrink from it as I would from--But
this is idle talking. I see you smile. You do not know all the--the
dreadful past."

"My dear, I do know--every thing you could tell me--and more."

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