Book: A Noble Life

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




"Papa, how we do miss him!" said Helen one day as she walked with her
father through the Cairnforth woods. "Who would have thought it when he
first came here only a few years ago?"

"Who would indeed?" said the minister, remembering a certain walk he had
taken through these very paths nineteen years before, when he had
wondered why providence had sent the poor babe into the world at all,
and thought how far, far happier it would have been lying dead on its
dead mother's bosom--that beautiful young mother, whose placid face
upon the white satin pillows of her coffin Mr. Cardross yet vividly
recalled; for he saw it often reflected in the living face of the son,
whom, happily, she had died without beholding.

"That was a wise saying of King David's, 'Let me fall into the hands of
the Lord, and not into the hands of men,'" mused Mr. Cardross, who had
just been hearing from Mr. Mentieth a long story of his perplexities
with "those Bruces," and had also had lately a few domestic dissensions
in his own parish, which did quarrel among itself occasionally, and
always brought its quarrels to be settled by the minister. "It is a
strange thing, Helen, my dear, what wonderful peace there often is in
great misfortunes. They are quite different from the petty miseries
which people make for themselves."

"I suppose so. But do you think, papa, that any good will come out of
the London journey?"

"I can not tell; still, it was right to try. You yourself said it was
right to try."

"Yes;" and then, seeing it was done now, the practical, brave Helen
stilled her uncertainties and let the matter rest.

No one was surprised that weeks elapsed before there came any tidings of
the travelers. Then Mr. Menteith wrote, announcing their safe arrival
in London, which diffused great joy throughout the parish, for of course
every body knew whither Lord Cairnforth had gone, and many knew why.
Scarcely a week passed that some of the far-distant tenantry even, who
lived on the other side of the peninsula, did not cross the hills,
walking many miles for no reason but to ask at the Manse what was the
latest news of "our earl."

But after the first letter there came no farther tidings, and indeed
none were expected. Mr. Menteith had probably returned to Edinburg, and
in those days there was no penny post, and nobody indulged in
unnecessary correspondence. Still, sometimes Helen thought, with a sore
uneasiness, "If the earl had had good news to tell, he would have surely
told it. He was always so glad to make any body happy."

The long summer twilights were ended, and one or two equinoctial gales
had whipped the waters of Loch Beg into wild "white horses," yet still
Lord Cairnforth did not return. At last, one Monday night, when Helen
and her father were returning from a three days' absence at the
"preachings'--that is, the half-yearly sacrament--in a neighboring
parish, they saw, when they came to the ferry, the glimmer of lights
from the Castle windows on the opposite shore of the loch.

"I do believe Lord Cairnforth is come home!"

"Ou ay, Miss Helen," said Duncan, the ferryman, "his lordship crossed
wi' me the day; an' I'm thinking, minister," added the old man
confidentially, "that ye suld just gang up to the Castle an' see him;
for it's ma opinion that the earl's come back as he gaed awa, nae better
and nae waur."

"What makes you thinks so? Did he say any thing?"

"Ne'er a word but just 'How are ye the day, Duncan?' and he sat and
glowered at the hills and the loch, and twa big draps rolled down his
puir bit facie--it's grown sae white and sae sma', ye ken--and I
said, 'My lord, it's grand to see your lordship back. Ye'll no be gaun
to London again, I hope?' 'Na, na,' says he; 'na, Duncan, I'm best at
hame--best at hame!' And when Malcolm lifted him, he gied a bit
skreigh, as if he'd hurted himself--Minister, I wish I'd thae London
doctors here by our loch side," muttered Duncan between his teeth, and
pulling away fiercely at his oar; but the minister said nothing.

He and Helen went silently home, and finding no message, walked on as
silently up to the Castle together.





Chapter 6

Old Duncan's penetration had been correct--the difficult and painful
London journey was all in vain. Lord Cairnforth had returned home
neither better nor worse than he was before; the experiment had failed.

Helen and her father guessed this from their first sight of him, though
they had found him sitting as usual in his arm-chair at his favorite
corner, and when they entered the library he had looked up with a smile
--the same old smile, as natural as though he had never been away.

"Is that you, Mr. Cardross? Helen too? How kind of you to come and see
me so soon!"

But, in spite of his cheerful greeting, they detected at once the
expression of suffering in the poor face--"sae white and sae sma',"
as Duncan had said; pale beyond its ordinary pallor, and shrunken and
withered like an old man's; the more so, perhaps, as the masculine down
had grown upon cheek and chin, and there was a matured manliness of
expression in the whole countenance, which formed a strange contrast to
the still puny and childish frame--alas! Not a whit less helpless or
less distorted than before. Yes, the experiment had failed.

They were so sure of this, Mr. Cardross and his daughter, that neither
put to him a single question on the subject, but instinctively passed it
over, and kept the conversation to all sorts of commonplace topics: the
journey--the wonders of London--and the small events which had
happened in quiet Cairnforth during the three months that the earl had
been away.

Lord Cairnforth was the first to end their difficulty and hesitation by
openly referring to that which neither of his friends could bear to
speak of.

"Yes," he said, at last, with a faint, sad smile, "I agree with old
Duncan--I never mean to go to London any more. I shall stay for the
rest of my days among my own people."

"So much the better for them," observed the minister, warmly.

"Do you think that? Well, we shall see. I must try and make it so, as
well as I can. I am but where I was before, as Dr. Hamilton said. Poor
Dr. Hamilton! He is so sorry."

Mr. Cardross did not ask about what, but turned to the table and began
cutting open the leaves of a book. For Helen, she drew nearer to Lord
Cairnforth's chair, and laid over the poor, weak, wasted fingers her
soft, warm hand.

The tears sprang to the young earl's eyes. "Don't speak to me," he
whispered; "it is all over now; but it was very hard for a time."

"I know it."

"Yes--at least as much as you can know."

Helen was silent. She recognized, as she had never recognized before,
the awful individuality of suffering which it had pleased God to lay
upon this one human being--suffering at which even the friends who
loved him best could only stand aloof and gaze, without the possibility
of alleviation.

"Ay," he said, at last, "it is all over: I need try no more experiments.
I shall just sit still and be content."

What was the minute history of the experiments he had tried, how much
bodily pain they had cost him, and through how much mental pain he had
struggled before he attained that "content," he did not explain even to
Helen. He turned the conversation to the books which Mr. Cardross was
cutting, and many other books, of which he had bought a whole cart-load
for the minister's library. Neither then, nor at any other time, did he
ever refer, except in the most cursory way, to his journey to London.

But Helen noticed that for a long while--weeks, nay, months, he
seemed to avoid more than ever any conversation about himself. He was
slightly irritable and uncertain of mood, and disposed to shut himself
up in the Castle, reading, or seeming to read, from morning till night.
It was not till a passing illness of the minister's in some degree
forced him that he reappeared at the Manse, and fell into his old ways
of coming and going, resuming his studies with Mr. Cardross, and his
walks with Helen--or rather drives, for he had ceased to be carried
in Malcolm's arms.

"I am a man, now, or ought to be," he said once, as a reason for this,
after which no one made any remarks on the subject. Malcolm still
retained his place as the earl's close attendant--as faithful as his
shadow, almost as silent.

But the next year or so made a considerable alteration in Lord
Cairnforth. Not in growth--the little figure never grew any bigger
than that of a boy of ten or twelve; but the childish softness passed
from the face; it sharpened, and hardened, and became that of a young
man. The features developed; and a short black beard, soft and curly,
for it had never known the razor, added character to what, in ordinary
men, would have been considered a very handsome face. It had none of
the painful expression so often seen in deformed persons, but more
resembled those sweet Italian heads of youthful saints--Saint
Sebastian's, for instance--which the old masters were so fond of
painting; and though there was a certain melancholy about it when in
repose, during conversation it brightened up, and was the cheerfullest,
most sunshiny face imaginable.

That is, it ultimately became so; but for a long time after the journey
to London a shadow hung over it, which rarely quite passed away except
in Helen's company. Nobody could be dreary for long beside Helen
Cardross; and either through her companionship, or his own inherent
strength of will, or both combined, the earl gradually recovered from
the bitterness of lost hopes, whatsoever they had been, and became once
more his own natural self, perhaps even more cheerful, since it was now
not so much the gayety of a boy as the composed, equable serenity of a
thoughtful man.

His education might be considered complete: it had advanced to the
utmost limit to which Mr. Cardross could carry it; but the pupil
insisted on retaining, nominally and pecuniarily, his position at the
Manse.

Or else the two would spend hours--nay, days, shut up together in the
Castle Library, the beautiful octagon room, with its painted ceiling,
and its eight walls lined from floor to roof with empty shelves, to plan
the filling of which was the delight of the minister's life, since, but
for his poor parish and his large family, Mr. Cardross would have been a
thorough bibliomaniac. Now, in a vicarious manner, the hobby of his
youth reappeared, and at every cargo of books that arrived at the Castle
his old eyes brightened--for he was growing to look really an old man
now--and he would plunge among them with an ardor that sometimes made
both the earl and Helen smile. But Helen's eyes were dim too, for she
saw through all the tender cunning, and often watched Lord Cairnforth as
he sat contentedly in his little chair, in the midst of a pile of books,
examining, directing, and sympathizing, though doing nothing. Alas!
nothing could he do. But it was one of the secrets which made these
three lives so peaceful, that each could throw itself out of itself into
that of another, and take thence, secondarily, the sunshine that was
denied to its own.

Beyond the family at the Manse the earl had no acquaintance whatsoever,
and seemed to desire none. His rank lifted him above the small
proprietors who lived within visitable distance of the Castle: they
never attempted to associate with him. Sometimes a stray caller
appeared, prompted by curiosity, which Mrs. Campbell generally found
ingenious reasons for leaving ungratified, and Lord Cairnforth's
excessive shyness and dislike to appear before strangers did the rest.
It is astonishing how little the world cares to cultivate those out of
whom it can get nothing; and the small establishment at Cairnforth
Castle, with its almost invisible head, soon ceased to be an object of
interest to any body--at least to any body in that sphere of life
where the earl would otherwise have moved.

Among his own tenantry, the small farmers along the shores of the two
lochs which bounded the peninsula, his long minority and mysterious
affliction made him personally almost unknown. They used to come twice
a year, at WhitSunday and Martinmas, to pay their rents to Mr. Menteith;
to inquire for my lord's health, and to drink in abundance of whisky;
but the earl himself they never saw, and their feelings toward him were
a mixture of reverence and awe.

It was different with the earl's immediate neighbors, the humble
inhabitants of the clachan. These, during the last nine years, had
gradually grown familiar, first with the little childish form, carried
about tenderly in Malcolm's arms, and then with the muffled figure,
scarcely less of a child to look at, which Malcolm, and sometimes Miss
Cardross, drove about in a pony-chaise. At the kirk especially, though
he was always carefully conveyed in first, and borne out last of all the
congregation, his face--his sweet, kind, beautiful face was known to
them all, and the children were always taught to doff their bonnets or
pull their forelocks to the earl.

Beyond that, nobody knew any thing about him. His large property,
accumulating every year, was entirely under the management of Mr.
Menteith; he himself took no interest in it; and the way by which the
former heirs of Cairnforth had used to make themselves popular from
boyhood, by going among the tenantry, hunting, shooting, fishing, and
boating, was impossible to this earl. His distant dependents hardly
remembered his existence, and he took no heed of theirs, until a few
months before he came of age, when one of these slight chances which
often determine so much changed the current of affairs.

If was just before the "term." Mr. Menteith had been expected all day,
but had not arrived, and the earl had taken a long drive with Helen and
her father through the Cairnforth woods, where the wild daffodils were
beginning to succeed the fading snowdrops, and the mavises had been
heard to sing those few rich notes which belong especially to the
twilights of early spring, and earnest of all the richness, and glory,
and delight of the year. The little party seemed to feel it--that
soft, dreamy sense of dawning spring, which stirs all the soul,
especially in youth, with a vague looking forward to some pleasantness
which never comes. They sat, silent and talking by turns, beside the
not unwelcome fire, in a corner of the large library.

"We shall miss Alick a good deal this spring," said Helen, recurring to
a subject of which the family heart was full, the departure of the
eldest son to "begin the world" in Mr. Menteith's office in Edinburg.
He was not a very clever lad, but he was sensible and steady, and
blessed with that practical mother-wit which is often better than
brains. The minister, though he had been bemoaning his boy's "little
Latin and less Greek," and comparing Alick's learning very
disadvantageously with that of the earl, to whom Mr. Cardross confided
all his troubles, nevertheless seemed both proud and hopeful of his
eldest son, the heir to his honest name, which Alick would now carry out
into a far wider world than that of the poor minister of Cairnforth,
and doubtless, in good time, transmit honorably to a third generation.

"Yes," added the father, when innumerable castles in the air had been
built and rebuilt for Alick's future, "I'll not deny that my lad is a
good lad. He is the hope of the house, and he knows it. It's little of
worldly gear that he'll get for many a day, and he tells me he will have
to work from morning till night; but he rather enjoys the prospect than
not."

"No wonder. Work must be a happy thing," said, with a sigh, the young
Earl of Cairnforth.

Helen's heart smote her for having let the conversation drift into this
direction, as it did occasionally when, from their long familiarity with
him, they forgot how he must feel about many things, natural enough to
them, but to him, unto whom the outer world, with all its duties,
energies, enjoyments, could never be any thing but a name, full of
sharpest pain. She said, after a few minutes watching of the grave,
still face--not exactly sad, but only very still, very grave--

"Just look at papa, how happy he is among those books you sent for!
Your plan of his arranging the library is the delight of his life."

"Is it? I am so glad," said the earl, brightening up at once. 'What a
good thing I thought of it!"

"You always do think of every thing that is good and kind," said Helen,
softly.

"Thank you," and the shadow passed away, as any trifling pleasure always
had power to make it pass. Sometimes Helen speculated vaguely on what a
grand sort of man the earl would have been had he been like other people
--how cheerful, how active, how energetic and wise. But then one
never knows how far circumstances create and unfold character. We often
learn as much by what is withheld as by what is enjoyed.

"Helen," he said, moving his chair a little nearer her--he had
brought one good thing from London, a self-acting chair, in which he
could wheel himself about easily, and liked doing it--"I wonder
whether your father would have taken as much pleasure in his books
thirty years ago. Do you think one could fill up one's whole life with
reading and study?"

"I can not say; I'm not clever myself, you know."

"Oh, but you are--with a sort of practical cleverness. And so is
Alick, in his own way. How happy Alick must be, going out into the
world, with plenty to do all day long! How bright he looked this
morning!"

"He sees only the sunny side of things, he is still no more than a boy."

"Not exactly; he is a year older than I am."

Helen hardly knew what to reply. She guessed so well the current of the
earl's thoughts, which were often her own too, as she watched his absent
or weary looks, though he tried hard to keep his attention to what Mr.
Cardross was reading or discussing. But the distance between twenty and
sixty--the life beginning and the life advancing toward its close--
was frequently apparent; also between an active, original mind,
requiring humanity for its study, and one whose whole bent was among the
dry bones of ancient learning--the difference, in short, between
learning and knowledge--the mere student and the man who only uses
study as a means to the perfecting of his whole nature, his complete
existence as a human being.

All this Helen felt with her quick, feminine instinct, but she did not
clearly understand it, and she could not reason about it at all. She
only answered in a troubled sort of way that she thought every body,
somehow or other, might in time find enough to do--to be happy in
doing--and she was trying to put her meaning into more connected and
intelligible form, when, greatly to her relief, Malcom entered the
library.

Malcolm, being so necessary and close a personal attendant on the earl,
always came and went about his master without any body's noticing him;
but now Helen fancied he was making signals to her or to some one. Lord
Cairnforth detected them.

"Is any thing wrong, Malcolm? Speak out; don't hide things from me. I
am not a child now."

There was just the slightest touch of sharpness in the gentle voice, and
Malcolm did speak out.

"I wadna be troubling ye, my lord, but it's just an auld man, Dougal Mc
Dougal, frae the head o' Loch Mhor--a puir doited body, wha says he
maun hae a bit word wi' your lordship. But I tellt him ye coulna be
fashed wi' the like o' him."

"That was not civil or right, Malcolm--an old man, too. Where is
he?"

"Just by the door--eh--and he's coming ben--the ill-mannered
loon!" cried Malcolm, angrily, as he interrupted the intruder--a
tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, with the bonnet set
upon the grizzled head in that sturdy independence--nay, more than
independence--rudeness, rough and thorny as his own thistle, which is
the characteristic of the Scotch peasant externally, till you get below
the surface to the warm, kindly heart.

"I'm no ill-mannered, and I'll just gang through the hale house till I
find my lord," said the old man, shaking off Malcolm with a strength
that his seventy odd years seemed scarcely to have diminished. "I'm
wushing ane harm to ony o' ye, but I maun get speech o' my lord. He's
no bairn; he'll be ane-and-twenty the thirtieth o' June: I mind the day
weel, for the wife was brought to bed o' her last wean the same day as
the countess, and our Dougal's a braw callant the noo, ye ken. Gin the
earl has ony wits ava, whilk folk thocht was aye doubtful', he'll hae
gotten them by this time. I maun speak wi' himself', unless, as they
said, he's no a' there."

"Haud your tongue, ye fule!" cried Malcolm, stopping him with a fierce
whisper. "Yon's my lord!"

The old shepherd started back, for at this moment a sudden blaze-up of
the fire showed him, sitting in the corner, the diminutive figure,
attired carefully after the then fashion of gentlemen's dress, every
thing rich and complete, even to the black silk stockings and shoes on
the small, useless feet, and the white ruffles half hiding the twisted
wrists and deformed hands.

"Yes, I am the Earl of Cairnforth. What did you want to say to me?"

He was so bewildered, the rough shepherd, who had spent all his life on
the hill-sides, and never seen or imagined so sad a sight as this, that
at first he could not find a word. Then he said, hanging back and
speaking confusedly and humbly, "I ask your pardon, my lord--I dina
ken--I'll no trouble ye the day."

"But you do not trouble me at all. Mr. Menteith is not here yet, and I
know nothing about business; still, if you wished to speak to me, do so;
I am Lord Cairnforth."

"Are ye?" said the shepherd, evidently bewildered still, so that he
forgot his natural awe for his feudal superior. "Are ye the countess's
bairn, that's just the age o' our Dougal? Dougal's ane o' the
gamekeepers, ye ken--sic a braw fellow--sax feet three. Ye'll hae
seen him, Maybe?"

"No, but I should like to see him. And yourself--are you a tenant of
mine, and what did you want with me?"

Encouraged by the kindly voice, and his own self-interest becoming
prominent once more, old Dougal told his tale--not an uncommon one
--of sheep lost on the hill-side, and one misfortune following
another, until a large family, children and orphan grandchildren, were
driven at last to want the "sup o' parritch" for daily food, sinking to
such depths of poverty as the earl in secluded life had never even heard
of. And yet the proud old fellow asked nothing except the remission of
one year's rent, after having paid rent honestly for half a lifetime.
That stolid, silent endurance, which makes a Scotch beggar of any sort
about the last thing you ever meet with in Scotland, supported him to
the very end.

The earl was deeply touched. As a matter of course, he promised all
that was desired of him, and sent the old shepherd away happy; but long
after Dougal's departure he sat thoughtful and grave.

"Can such things be, Helen, and I never heard of them? Are some of my
people--they are my people, since the land belongs to me--as
terribly poor as that man?"

"Ay, very many, though papa looks after them as much as he can. Dougal
is out of his parish, or he would have know him. Papa knows every body,
and takes care of every body, as far as possible."

"So ought I--or I must do it when I am older," said the earl,
thoughtfully.

"There will be no difficulty about that when you come of age and enter
on your property."

"Is it a very large property? For I never heard or inquired."

"Very large."

"Show me its boundary; there is the map."

Helen took it down and drew with a pencil the limits of the Cairnforth
estates. They extended along the whole peninsula, and far up into the
main land.

"There, Lord Cairnforth, every bit of this is yours."

"To do exactly what I like with?"

"Certainly."

"Helen, it is an awfully serious thing."

Helen was silent.

"How strange!" He continued, after a pause. "And this was really all
mine from the very hour of my birth?"

"Yes."

"And when I come of age I shall have to take my property into my own
hands, and manage it just as I choose, or as I can?"

"Of course you will; and I think you can do it, if you try."

For it was not the first time that Helen had pondered over these things,
since, being neither learned nor poetical, worldly-minded nor selfish,
in her silent hours her mind generally wandered to the practical
concerns of other people, and especially of those she loved.

"'Try' ought to be the motto of the Cardross arms--of yours certainly,"
said Lord Cairnforth, smiling. "I should like to assume it on mine,
instead of my own 'Virtute et fide,' which is of little use to me.
How can I--I--be brave or faithful?"

"You can be both--and you will," said Helen, softly. Years from that
day she remembered what she had said, and how true it was.

A little while afterward, while the minister still remained buried in
his beloved books, Lord Carinforth recurred again to Dougal Mac Dougal.

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