Book: A Noble Life

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




Now, after lessons, he would occasionally be persuaded to quit that
beloved study, and take a walk along the loch side, or across the moor,
to show his pupil the country of which he, poor little fellow! was owner
and lord. He did it at first out of pure kindness, to save the earl
from the well-meant intrusion of neighbors, but afterward from sheer
pleasure in seeing the boy so happy. To him, mounted in Malcolm's arms
and brought for the first time into contact with the outer world, every
thing was a novelty and delight. And his quick perception let nothing
escape him. He seemed to watch lovingly all nature, from the grand
lights and shadows which moved over the mountains, to the little
moorland flowers which he made Malcolm stop to gather. All living
things too, from the young rabbit that scudded across their path, to the
lark that rose singing up into the wide blue air--he saw and noticed
every thing.

But he never once said, what Helen, who, as often as her house duties
allowed, delighted to accompany them on these expeditions, was always
expecting he would say, Why had God given these soulless creatures legs
to run and wings to fly, strength, health, and activity to enjoy
existence, and denied all these things to him? Denied them, not for a
week, a month, a year, but for his whole lifetime--a lifetime so
short at best;--"few of days, and full of trouble." Why could He not
have made it a little more happy?

Thousands have asked themselves, in some form or other, the same
unanswered, unanswerable question. Helen had done so already, young as
she was; when her mother died, and her father seemed slowly breaking
down, and the whole world appeared to her full of darkness and woe. How
then must it have appeared to this poor boy? But, strange to say, that
bitter doubt, which so often came into Helen's heart, never fell from
child's lips at all. Either he was still a mere child, accepting life
just as he saw it, and seeking no solution of its mysteries, or else,
though so young, he was still strong enough to keep his doubts to
himself, to bear his own burden, and trouble no one.

Or else--and when she watched his inexpressibly sweet face, which had
the look you sometimes see in blind faces, of absolutely untroubled
peace, Helen was forced to believe this--God, who had taken away from
him so much, had given him something still more--a spiritual insight
so deep and clear that he was happy in spite of his heavy misfortune.
She never looked at him but she thought involuntarily of the text, out
of the only book with which unlearned Helen was very familiar--that
"in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is
in heaven."

After a fortnight's stay at the Castle Mr. Menteith felt convinced that
his experiment had succeeded, and that, onerous as the duty of guardian
was, he might be satisfied to leave his ward under the charge of Mr.
Cardross.

"Only, it those Bruces should try to get at him, you must let me know at
once. Remember, I trust you."

"Certainly, you may. Has any thing been heard of them lately?"

"Nothing much, beyond the continual applications for advances of the
annual sum which the late earl gave them, and which I continue to pay,
just to keep them out of the way."

"They are still abroad?"

"I suppose so; but I hear very little about them. They were relations
on the countess's side, you know--it was she who brought the money.
Poor little fellow, what an accumulation it will be by the time he is of
age, and what small good it will do him!"

And the honest man sighed as he looked from Mr. Cardross's dining-room
window across the Manse garden, where, under a shady tree, was placed
the earl's little wheel-chair, which was an occasional substitute for
Malcolm's arms. In it he sat, with a book on his lap, and with the
aspect of entire content which was so very touching. Helen sat beside
him on the grass, sewing--she was always sewing; and, indeed, she had
need, if her needle were to keep pace with its requirements in the large
family of boys.

"That's a good girl of yours, and his lordship seems to have taken to
her amazingly. I am very glad, for he had no feminine company at all
except Mrs. Campbell, and, good as she is, she isn't quite the thing--
not exactly a lady, you see. Eh, Mr. Cardross--what a lady his
mother was! We'll never again see the like of the poor countess, nor,
in all human probability, will we ever again see another Countess of
Cairnforth.

"No."

"Yet," continued Mr. Menteith, after a long pause, "Dr. Hamilton thinks
he may live many years. Strange to say, his constitution is healthy and
sound, and his sweet, placid nature--his mother's own nature (isn't
he very like her sometimes?)--gives him so much advantage in
struggling through every ailment. If he can be made happy, as you and
Helen will, I doubt not, be able to make him, and kept strictly to a
wholesome, natural country life here, it is not impossible he may live
to enter upon his property. And then--for the future, God knows!"

"It is well for us," replied the minister, gravely, "That He does know
--every thing."

"I suppose it is."

And then for another hour the two good men--one living in the world
and the other out of it--both fathers of families, carrying their own
burden of cares, and having gone through their own personal sorrows each
in his day, talked over, the minutest degree, the present, and, so far
as they could divine it, the future of this poor boy, who, through so
strange a combination of circumstances, had been left entirely to their
charge.

"It is a most responsible charge, Mr. Cardross, and I feel almost
selfish in shifting it so much from my own shoulders upon yours."

"I am willing to undertake it. Perhaps it may do me good," returned the
minister, with a slight sigh.

"And you will give him the best education you can--your own, in
short, which is more than sufficient for Lord Cairnforth; certainly more
than the last earl had, or his father either."

"Possibly," said Mr. Cardross, who remembered both--stalwart, active,
courtly lords of the soil, great at field-sports and festivities, but
not over given to study. "No, the present earl does not take after his
progenitors in any way. You should just see him, Mr. Menteith, over his
Virgil; and I have promised to begin Homer with him tomorrow. It does
one's heart good to see a boy so fond of his books," added the minister,
warming up into an enthusiasm which delighted the other extremely.

"Yes, I think my plan was right," said he, rubbing his hands. "It will
work well on both sides. There could not be found any where a better
tutor than yourself for the earl. He never can go much into the world;
he may not even live to be of age; still, as long as he does live, his
life ought to be made as pleasant--I mean, as little painful to him
as possible. And he ought to be fitted, in case he should live, for as
many years as he can fulfill of the duties of his position; its
enjoyments, alas! he will never know."

"I am not so sure of that," replied Mr. Cardross. "He loves books; he
may turn out a thoroughly educated and accomplished student--perhaps
even a man of letters. To have a thirst for knowledge, and unlimited
means to gratify it, is not such a bad thing. Why," continued the
minister, glancing round on his own poorly-furnished shelves, where
every book was bought almost at the sacrifice of a meal, "he will be
rich enough to stock from end to end that wilderness of shelves in the
half-finished Castle library. How pleasant that must be!"

Mr. Menteith smiled as if he did not quite comprehend this sort of
felicity. "But, in any case, Lord Cairnforth seems to have, what will
be quite as useful to him as brains, a very kindly heart. He does not
shut himself up in a morbid way, but takes an interest in all about him.
Look at him, now, how heartily he is laughing at something your daughter
has said. Really, those two seem quite happy."

"Helen makes every body happy," fondly said Helen's father.

"I believe so. I shall be sending down one of my big lads to look after
her some day. I've eight of them, Mr. Cardross, all to be educated,
settled, and wived. It's a 'sair fecht,' I assure you."

"I know it; but still it has its compensations."

"Ay, they're all strong, likely, braw fellows, who can push their own
way in the world and fend for themselves. Not like--" he glanced over
to the group on the grass, and stopped. Yet at that moment a hearty
trill of thoroughly childish laughter seemed to rebuke the regrets of
both fathers.

"That child certainly has the sweetest nature--the most remarkable
faculty for enjoying other people's enjoyments, in which he himself can
never share."

"Yes, it was always so, from the time he was a mere infant. Dr.
Hamilton often noticed it, and said it was a good omen."

"I believe so," rejoined Mr. Cardross, earnestly. "I feel sure that if
Lord Cairnforth lives, he will neither have a useless nor an unhappy
life."

"Let us hope not. And yet--poor little fellow!--to be the last
Earl of Cairnforth, and to be--such as he is!"

"He is what God made him, what God willed him to be," said the minister,
solemnly. "We know not why it should be so; we only know that it is,
and we can not alter it. We can not remove from him his heavy cross,
but I think we can help him to bear it."

"You are a good man, Mr. Cardross," replied the Edinburg writer,
huskily, as he rose from his seat, and declining another glass of the
claret, of which, under some shallow pretext, he had sent a supply into
the minister's empty cellar, he crossed the grass-plot, and spent the
rest of the evening beside his ward and Helen.





Chapter 5

Days, months, and years slip smoothly by on the shores of Loch Beg.
Even now, though the cruelly advancing finger of Civilization has
touched it, dotted it with genteel villas on either side, plowed it with
smoky steam boats, and will shortly frighten the innocent fishes by
dropping a marine telegraph wire across the mouth of the loch, it is a
peaceful place still. But when the last Earl of Cairnforth was a child
it was all peace. In summertime a few stray tourists would wander past
it, wondering at its beauty; but in winter it had hardly any
communication with the outer world. The Manse, the Castle, and the
clachan, with a few outlying farm-houses, comprised the whole of the
Cairnforth; and the little peninsula, surrounded on three sides by
water, and on the fourth by hills, was sufficiently impregnable and
isolated to cause existence to flow on there very quietly, in what
townspeople call dullness, and country people repose.

For, whatever repose there may be in country life--real country--
there is certainly no monotony. The perpetual change of seasons,
varying the aspect of the outside world every month, every week--nay,
almost every day, is a continual interest to observant minds, and
especially so to intelligent children, who are as yet lying on the
breast of Mother Nature only, nor have begun to feel or understand the
darker and sadder interests of human passion and emotion.

The little Earl of Cairnforth was one of these; and many a time, through
all the summers of his life; he recalled tenderly that first summer at
Cairnforth, when, no longer pent up between walls and roofs, or dragged
about in carriages, he learned, by Molcolm's aid and under Helen's
teaching, to chronicle time in different ways; first by the hyacinths
and primroses vanishing, and giving place to the wild roses--those
exquisite deep-red roses which belong especially to this country-side;
then by the woods--his own woods--growing fragrant with
innumerable honeysuckles; and lastly by the heather on the moorland--
Scotland's own flower--which clothes entire hillsides as with a
garment of gorgeous purple, and fills the whole atmosphere with the
scent of a spice-garden; and when it faded into a soft brown, dying
delicately, beautiful to the last, there appeared the brambles, trailing
every where, with their pretty yellowing leaves and their delicious
berries. How blithe, even like a mere "callant," big Malcolm was, when,
leaving the earl on the sunny hill-side under Miss Cardross's charge, he
used to wander off, and come back with his hands all torn and scratched,
to feed his young master with blackberries!

"He is not unhappy--I am sure the child is not unhappy," Helen often
said to her father, when--as was his way--Mr. Cardross would get
fits of uncertainty and downheartedness, and think he was killing his
pupil with study, or wearying him, and risking his health by letting him
do as much as his energetic mind, always dominant over the frail body,
prompted him to do. "Only let him love his life, and put as much in it
as he can, be it long or short, and then it will never be a sad life or
a life thrown away."

"Helen, you're not clever, but you're a wise little woman, my dear," the
minister would say, patting the flaxen curls or the busy hands--large
and brown, yet with a certain grace about them, too--helpful hands,
made to hold children, or tend sick folk, or sustain the feeble steps of
old age. She was "no bonnie" Helen Cardross; it was just a round, rosy,
sonsie face, with no features in particular, but she was pleasant to
look upon, and inexpressibly pleasant to live with; for it was such a
wholesome nature, so entirely free from moods, or fancies, or crochets
of any kind--those sad vagaries of ill-health, ill-humor, and
ill-conditionedness of every sort, which are sometimes only a
misfortune, caused by an unhappy natural temperament, but oftener arise
from pure egotism, of which there was not an atom in Helen Cardross.
Her life was like the life of a flower--as natural, unconscious,
fresh, and sweet: she took in every influence about her, and gave out
freely all she had to give; desired no better things than she possessed,
and where she was planted there she grew.

It was not wonderful that the little earl loved her, and that under her
sunshiny soul his life too blossomed out as it might never otherwise
have done, but have drooped and faded, and gone back into the darkness,
imperfect and unfulfilled; for, though each human life is, in a sense,
complete to itself, and must work itself out independently, clinging to
no other, still there is a great and beautiful mystery in the way one
life seems to influence an other, sometimes for ill, but far, far
oftener for good.

Lord Cairnforth was not much with the Cardross boys. He liked them, and
evidently craved after their company, but they were very shy of him.
Sometimes they let Malcolm bring him into their boat, and condescended
to row him up and down the loch, a mode of locomotion in which he
greatly delighted, for, at best, the shaking of the great lumbering
coach was not easy to him, and he always begged to be carried in
Malcolm's arms till he found how pleasantly he could lie in the stern of
the Manse boat, and float about on the smooth water, watching the
mountains and the shores.

True, he could not stir an inch from where he was laid down, but he lay
there so contentedly, enjoying everything, and really looked, what he
often said he was, "as happy as a king."

And by degrees, with a little home persuasion from Helen, the boys got
reconciled to his company--found, indeed, that he was not such bad
company after all; for often, when they were tired of pulling, and let
the boat drift into some quiet little bay, or rock lazily in the middle
of the loch, the little earl would begin talking--telling stories,
which soon caught the attention of the minister's boys. These were
either fragments out of the books he had read, which seemed countless to
the young Cardrosses, or, what they liked still better, tales "out of
his own head;" and these tales were always the last that they would have
expected from one like him--wild exploits; wanderings over South
American prairies, or shipwrecks on desert islands; astonishing feats of
riding, or fighting, or traveling by land and sea--every thing, in
short, belonging to that sort of active, energetic, adventurous life, of
which the relator could never have had the least experience, and never
would have in this world. Perhaps for that very reason his fancy
delighted therein the more.

And his stories were enjoyed by others as much as by himself, which no
doubt added to the charm of them. When winter came, and all the boating
days were done, many a night, round the fire of the Manse parlor, or in
the "awful eerie" library at the Castle, the earl used to have a whole
circle of young people, and some elder ones too, gathered round his
wheel-chair, listening to his wonderful tales of adventure by flood and
field.

"Why don't you write them out properly?" the boys would ask sometimes,
forgetting--what Helen would never have forgotten. But he only
looked down on his poor helpless fingers and smiled.

However, he had, with great difficulty and pains, managed to learn to
write--that is, to sign his name, or indite any short letter to Mr.
Menteith or others, which, as he grew older, sometimes became necessary.
But writing was always a great trouble to him; and, fortunately, people
were not expected to write much in those days. Had he been born a
little later in his century, the Earl of Cairnforth might have
brightened his sad life by putting his imagination forth in print, and
becoming a great literary character; as it was, he merely told his tales
for his own delight and that of those about him, which possibly was a
better thing than fame.

Then he made jokes, too. Sometimes, in his quiet, dry way, he said such
droll things that the Cardross boys fell into shouts of laughter. He
had the rare quality of seeing the comical side of things, without a
particle of ill-nature being mixed up with his fun. His wit danced
about as brilliantly and harmlessly as the Northern lights that flashed
and flamed of winter nights over the mountains at the head of the loch;
and the solid, somewhat heavy Manse boys, gradually growing up to men,
often wondered why it was that, miserable as the earl's life was, or
seemed to them, they always felt merrier instead of sadder when they
were in his company.

But sometimes when with Helen alone, and more especially as he grew to
be a youth in his teens, and yet no bigger, no stronger, and scarcely
less helpless than a child, the young earl would let fall a word or two
which showed that he was fully and painfully aware of his own condition,
and all that it entailed. It was evident that he had thought much and
deeply of the future which lay before him. If, as now appeared
probable, he should live to man's estate, his life must, at best, be one
long endurance, rendered all the sharper and harder to bear because
within that helpless body dwelt a soul, which was, more than that of
most men, alive to every thing beautiful, noble, active, and good.

However, though he occasionally betrayed these workings of his mind, it
was only to Helen, and not to her very much, for he was exceedingly
self-contained from his childhood. He seemed to feel by instinct that
to him had been allotted a special solitude of existence, into which,
try as tenderly as they would, none could ever fully penetrate, and with
which none could wholly sympathize. It was inevitable in the nature of
things.

He apparently accepted the fact as such, and did not attempt to break
through it. He took the strongest interest in other people, and in
every thing around him, but he did not seem to expect to have the like
returned in any great degree. Perhaps it was one of those merciful
compensations that what he could not have he was made strong enough to
do without.

So things went on, without any other variety than an occasional visit
from Mr. Menteith or Dr. Hamilton, for seven years, during which the
minister's pupil had acquired every possible learning that his teacher
could give, and was fast becoming less a scholar than an equal companion
and friend--so familiar and dear, that Mr. Cardross, like all who
knew him, had long since almost forgotten that the earl was--what he
was. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should sit
there in his little chair, doing nothing; absolutely passive to all
physical things; but interested in every thing and every body, and,
whether at the Manse or the Castle, as completely one of the circle as
if he took the most active part therein. Consulted by one, appealed to
by another, joked by a third--he was ever ready with a joke--it
was only when strangers happened to see him, and were startled by the
sight, that his own immediate friends recognized how different he was
from other people.

It was one day when he was about nineteen that Helen, coming in to see
him with a message from her father, who wanted to speak to him about
some parish matters, found Lord Cairnforth deeply meditating over a
letter. He slipped it aside, however, and it was not until the whole
parish question had been discussed and settled, as somehow he and Helen
very often did settle the whole affairs of the parish between them, that
he brought it out again, fidgeting it out of his pocket with his poor
fingers, which seemed a little more helpless than usual.

"Helen, I wish you would read that, and tell me what you think about
it"?

It was a letter somewhat painful to read, with the earl sitting by and
watching her, but Helen had long learned never to shrink from these sort
of things. He felt them far less if every body else faced them as
boldly as he had himself always done.

The letter was from Dr. Hamilton, written after his return from a three
days' visit at Cairnforth Castle. It explained, after a long apologetic
preamble, the burden of which was that the earl was now old enough and
thoughtful enough to be the best person to speak to on such a difficult
subject, that there had been a certain skillful mechanician lately in
Edinburg who declared he would invent some support by which Lord
Cairnforth could be made, not indeed to walk--that was impossible--
but to be by many degrees more active than now. But it would be
necessary for him to go to London, and there submit to a great amount of
trouble and inconvenience--possibly some pain.

"I tell you this last, my dear lord," continued the good doctor,
"because I ought not to deceive you; and because, so far as I have seen,
you are a courageous boy--nay, almost a man--or will be soon. I
must forewarn you also that the experiment, is only an experiment--
that it may fail; but even in that case you would be only where you were
before--no better, no worse, except for the temporary annoyance and
suffering."

"And if it succeeded?" said Helen, almost in a whisper, as she returned
the letter.

The earl smiled--a bright, vague, but hopeful smile--"I might be a
little more able to do things--to live my life with a little less
trouble to myself, and possibly to other people. Well, Helen? You
don't speak, but I think your eyes say 'Try!'"

"Yes, my dear." She sometimes, though not often now, lest it might vex
him by making him still so much a child, called him "my dear."

This ended the conversation, which Helen did not communicate to any
body, nor referred to again with Lord Cairnforth, though she pondered
over it and him continually.

A week after this, Mr. Menteith unexpectedly appeared at the Castle, and
after a long consultation with Mr. Cardross, it was agreed that what
seemed the evident wish of the earl should be accomplished if possible;
that he, Malcolm, Mrs. Campbell, and Mr. Menteith should start for
London immediately.

Such a journey was then a very different thing from what it is now, and
to so helpless a traveler as Lord Cairnforth its difficulties were
doubled. He had to post the whole distance in his own carriage, which
was fitted up so as to be as easy as possible in locomotion, besides
being so arranged that he could sleep in it if absolutely necessary, for
ordinary beds and ordinary chairs were sometimes very painful to him.
Had he been poor, in all probability he would long ago have died--of
sheer suffering.

Fortunately, it was summer time. He staid at Cairnforth till after his
birthday, "for I may never see another," said he, with that gentle smile
which seemed to imply that he would be neither glad nor sorry, and then
he started. He was quite cheerful himself, but Mr. Menteith and Mrs.
Campbell looked very anxious. Malcolm was full of superstitious
forebodings, and Helen Cardross and her father, when they bade him
good-by and watched the carriage drive slowly from the Castle doors,
felt as sad as if they were parting from him, not for London, but for
the other world.

Not until he was gone did they recognize how much they missed him: in
the Manse parlor where "the earl's chair" took its regular place--in
the pretty Manse garden, where its wheels had made in the gravel walks
deep marks which Helen could not bear to have erased--in his pew at
the kirk, where the minister had learned to look Sunday after Sunday for
that earnest, listening face. Mr. Cardross, too, found it dull no
longer to have his walk up to the Castle, and his hour or two's rest in
the yet unfinished library, which he and Lord Cairnforth had already
begun to consult about, and where the earl was always to be found,
sitting at his little table with his books about him, and Malcolm
lurking within call, or else placed contentedly by the French window,
looking out upon that blaze of beauty into which the countess's
flower-garden had grown. How little they had thought--the young
father and mother, cut off in the midst of their plans, that their poor
child would one day so keenly enjoy them all, and have such sore need
for these or any other simple and innocent enjoyments.

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