Book: A Noble Life

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




Lord Cairnforth smiled to himself once more, and let the conversation
end; afterward--long afterward, he recalled it, and thought with a
strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal;
nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face--not pretty, but so
perfectly candid and true--with the sun shining on the lint-white
hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay,
and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears--oceans
of bitterness--that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was
an old woman, quite faded out of Helen's eyes.

"Ay," Lord Cairnforth said to himself, when she had gone away, and he
was left alone in that helpless solitude which, being the inevitable
necessity, had grown into the familiar habit of his life, "ay, it is all
right. No harm could come--there would be nothing neglected--even
were I to die to-morrow."

That "dying to-morrow," which might happen to any one of us, how few
really recognize it and prepare for it! Not in the ordinary religious
sense of "preparation for death"--often a most irreligious thing
--a frantic attempt of sinning and terror-stricken humanity to strike
a balance-sheet with heaven, just leaving a sufficient portion on the
credit side--but preparation in the ordinary worldly meaning--
keeping one's affairs straight and clear, that no one may be perplexed
therewith afterward; forgiving and asking forgiveness of offenses;
removing evil done, and delaying not for a day any good that it is
possible to do.

It was a strange thing; but, as after his death it was discovered, the
true secret of the wonderful calmness and sweetness which, year by year,
deepened more and more in Lord Cairnforth's character, ripening it to a
perfectness in which those who only saw the outside of his could hardly
believe, consisted in this ever-abiding thought--that he might die
to-morrow. Existence was to him such a mere twilight, dim, imperfect,
and sad, that he never rested in it, but lived every day, as it were, in
prospect of the eternal dawn.





Chapter 9

This summer, which, as it glided away, Lord Cairnforth often declared to
be the happiest of his life, ended by bringing him the first heavy
affliction--external affliction--which his life had ever known.

Suddenly, in the midst of the late-earned rest of a very toilsome
career, died Mr. Menteith, the earl's long-faithful friend, who had been
almost as good to him as a father. He felt it sorely; the more so,
because, though his own frail life seemed always under the imminent
shadow of death, death had never touched him before as regarded other
people. He had lived, as we all unconsciously do, till the great enemy
smites us, feeling as if, whatever might be the case with himself, those
whom he loved could never die. This grief was something quite new to
him, and it struck him hard.

The tidings came on a gloomy day in late October, the season when
Cairnforth is least beautiful; for the thick woods about it make the
always damp atmosphere heavy with "the moist, rich smell of the rotting
leaves," and the roads lying deep in mud, and the low shore hung with
constant mists, give a general impression of dreariness. The far-away
hills vanish entirely for days together, and the loch itself takes a
leaden hue, as if it never could be blue again. You can hardly believe
that the sun will ever again shine out upon it; the white waves rise,
the mountains reappear, and the whole scene grows clear and lovely, as
life does sometimes if we have only patience to endure through the weary
winter until spring.

But for the good man, John Menteith, his springs and winter were alike
ended; he was gathered to his fathers, and his late ward mourned him
bitterly.

Mr. Cardross and Helen, coming up to the Castle as soon as the news
reached them, found Lord Cairnforth in a state of depression such as
they had never before witnessed in him. One of the things which seemed
to affect him most painfully, as small things sometimes do in the midst
of deepest grief, was that he could not attend Mr. Menteith's funeral.

"Every other man," said he, sadly, "every other man can follow his dear
friends and kindred to the grave, can give them respect in death as he
has given them love and help during life--I can do neither. I can
help no one--be of use to no one. I am a mere cumberer of the
ground. It would be better if I were away."

"Hush! Do not dare to say that," answered Mr. Cardross. And he sent
the rest away, even Helen, and sat down beside his old pupil, not merely
as a friend, but as a minister--in the deepest meaning of the word,
even as it was first used of Him who "came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister."

Helen's father was not a demonstrative man under ordinary circumstances;
he was too much absorbed in his books, and in a sort of languid
indifference to worldly matters, which had long hung over him, more or
less, ever since his wife's death; but, when occasion arose, he could
rise equal to it; and he was one of those comforters who knew the way
through the valley of affliction by the marks which their own feet have
trod.

He and the earl spent a whole hour alone together. Afterward, when
sorrow, compared to which the present grief was calm and sacred, fell
upon them both, they remembered this day, and were not afraid to open
their wounded hearts to one another.

At last Mr. Cardross came out of the library, and told Helen that Lord
Cairnforth wanted to speak to her.

"He wishes to have your opinion, as well as my own, about a journey he
is projecting to Edinburg, and some business matters which he desires to
arrange there. I think he would have like to see Captain Bruce too.
Where is he?"

The captain had found this atmosphere of sorrow a little too
overpowering, and had disappeared for a long ride; so Miss Cardross had
been sitting alone all the time.

"Your father has been persuading me, Helen," said the earl, when she
came in, "that I am not quite so useless in the world as I imagined. He
says he has reason to believe, from things Mr. Menteith let fall, that
my dear old friend's widow is not very well provided for, and she and
her children will have a hard battle even now. Mr. Cardross thinks I
can help her very materially, in one way especially. You know I have
made my will?"

"Yes," replied unconscious Helen, "you told me so."

"Mr. Menteith drew it up the last time he was here. How little we
thought it would be really the last time! Ah! Helen, if we could only
look forward!"

"It is best not," said Helen, earnestly.

"Well, my will is made. And though in it I left nothing to Mr. Menteith
himself, seeing that such a return of his kindness would be very
unwelcome, I insisted doing what was equivalent--bequeathing a
thousand pounds to each of his children. Was I right in that? You do
not object"?

"Most assuredly not," answered Helen, though a little surprised at the
question. Still, she was so long accustomed to be consulted by the
earl, and to give her opinion frankly and freely on all points, that the
surprise was only momentary.

"And, by the way, I mean to leave the same sum--one thousand pounds
--to my cousin, Captain Bruce. Remember that, Helen; remember it
particularly, will you? In case any thing should happen before I have
time to add this to my will. But to the Menteiths. Your father thinks,
and I agree with him, that the money I design for them will be far
better spent now, or some portion of it, in helping these fatherless
children on in the world, than in keeping them waiting for my death,
which may not happen for years. What do you think?"

Helen agreed heartily. It would cause a certain diminution of yearly
income, but then the earl had far more than enough for his own wants,
and if not spent thus, the sum would certainly have been expended by him
some other form of benevolence. She said as much.

"Possibly it might. What else should I do with it?" was Lord
Cairnforth's answer. "But, in order to get at the money, and alter my
will, so that in no case should this sum be paid twice over, to the
injury of my heir--I must take care of my heir," and he slightly
smiled, "I ought to go at once to Edinburg. Shall I?"

Helen hesitated. The earl's last journey had been so unpropitious--
he had taken so long a time to recover from it--that she had
earnestly hoped he would never attempt another. She expressed this as
delicately as she could.

"No, I never would have attempted it for myself. Change is only pain
and weariness to me. I have no wish to leave dear, familiar Cairnforth
till I leave it for--the place where my good old friend is now. And
sometimes, Helen, I fancy the hills of Paradise will not be very unlike
the hills about our loch. You would think of me far away, when you were
looking at them sometimes?"

Helen fixed her tender eyes upon him--"It is quite as likely that you
may have to think of me thus, for I may go first; I am the elder of us
two. But all that is in God's hands alone. About Edinburg now. When
should you start?"

"At once, I think; though, with my slow traveling, I should not be in
time for the funeral; and even if I were, I could not attend it without
giving much trouble to other people. But, as your father has shown me,
the funeral does not signify. The great matter is to be of use to Mrs.
Menteith and the children in the way I explained. Have I your consent,
my dear!"

For an answer, Helen pointed to a few lines in a Bible which lay open on
the library table: no doubt her father had been reading out of it, for
it was open at that portion which seems to have plumbed the depth of all
human anguish--the Book of Job. She repeated the verses:

"'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me,
it gave witness to me;

"'Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him
that had none to help him:

"'The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I
caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.'

"That is what will be said of you one day, Lord Cairnforth. Is not this
something worth living for?"

"Ay, it is!" replied the earl, deeply moved; and Helen was scarcely less
so.

They discussed no more the journey to Edinburg; but Lord Cairnforth, in
his decided way, gave orders immediately to prepare for it, taking with
him, as usual, Malcolm and Mrs. Campbell. By the time Captain Bruce
returned from his ride, the guest was startled by the news that his host
meant to quit Cairnforth at daylight the next morning, which appeared to
disconcert the captain exceedingly.

"I would volunteer to accompany you, cousin," said he, after expressing
his extreme surprise and regret, "but the winds of Edinburg are ruin to
my weak lungs, which the air here suits so well. So I must prepare to
quit pleasant Cairnforth, where I have received so much kindness, and
which I have grown to regard almost like home--the nearest approach
to home that in my sad, wandering life I ever knew."

There was an unmistakable regret in the young man's tone which, in spite
of his own trouble, went to the earl's good heart.

"Why should you leave at all?" said he. "Why not remain here and await
my return, which can not be long delayed--two months at most--even
counting my slow traveling? I will give you something to do meanwhile:
I will make you viceroy of Cairnforth during my absence--that is,
under Miss Cardross, who alone knows all the parish affairs--and
mine. Will you accept the office?"

"Under Miss Cardross?" Captain Bruce laughed, but did not seem quite to
relish it. However, he expressed much gratitude at having been thought
worthy of the earl's confidence.

"Don't be humble, my good cousin and friend. If I did not trust you,
and like you, I should never think of asking you to stay. Mr. Cardross
--Helen--what do you say to my plan"?

Both gave a cordial assent, as was indeed certain. Nothing ill was
known of Captain Bruce, and nothing noticed in him unlikeable, or
unworthy of liking. And even as to his family, who wrote to him
constantly, and whose letters he often showed, there had appeared
sufficient evidence in their favor to counterbalance much of the
suspicions against them, so that the earl was glad he had leaned to the
charitable side in making his cousin welcome to Cairnforth; glad, too,
that he could atone by warm confidence and extra kindness for what now
seemed too long a neglect of those who were really his nearest kith and
kin.

Mr. Cardross also; any prejudices he had from his knowledge of the late
earl's troubles with the Bruces were long ago dispersed. And Helen was
too innocent herself ever to have had a prejudice at all. She said,
when appealed to pointedly by the earl, as he now often appealed to her
in many things, that she thought the scheme both pleasant and advisable.

"And now, papa," added she, for her watchful eye detected Lord
Cairnforth's pale face and wearied air, "let us say good-night--and
good-by."

Long after, they remembered, all of them, what an exceedingly quiet and
ordinary good-by it was, none having the slightest feeling that it was
more than a temporary parting. The whole thing had been so sudden, and
the day's events appeared quite shadowy, and as if every body would wake
up to-morrow morning to find them nothing but a dream.

Besides, there was a little hurrying and confusion consequent on the
earl's insisting on sending the Cardrosses home, for the dull, calm day
had changed into the wildest of nights--one of those sudden
equinoctial storms, that in an hour or two alter the whole aspect of
things this region.

"You must take the carriage, Helen--you and your father; it is the
last thing I can do for you--and I would do every thing in the world
for you if I could; but I shall, one day. Good-by. Take care of
yourself, my dear."

These were the earl's farewell words to her. She was so accustomed to
his goodness and kindness that she never thought much about them till
long afterward, when kindness was gone, and goodness seemed the merest
delusion and dream.

When his friends had departed, Lord Cairnforth sat silent and
melancholy. His cousin good-naturedly tried to rouse him into the usual
contest at chess with which they had begun to while away the long winter
evenings, and which just suited Lord Cairnforth's acute, accurate, and
introspective brain, accustomed to plan and to order, so that he
delighted in the game, and was soon as good a player as his teacher.
But now his mind was disturbed and restless; he sat by the fireside,
listening to the fierce wind that went howling round and round the
Castle, as the wind can howl along the sometimes placid shores of Loch
Beg.

"I hope they have reached the Manse in safety. Let me know, Malcolm,
when the carriage returns. I will go to bed then. I wish they would
have remained here; but the minister never will stay; he dislikes
sleeping a single night from under his own roof. Is he not a good man,
cousin--one of a thousand?"

"I have not the slightest doubt of it."

"And his daughter--have you in any way modified your opinion of her,
which at first was not very favorable?"

"Not as to her beauty, certainly," was the careless reply. "She's 'no
bonnie,' as you say in these parts--terribly Scotch; but she is very
good. Only don't you think good people are just a little wearisome
sometimes?"

The earl smiled. He was accustomed to, and often rather amused by his
cousin's honest worldliness and outspoken skepticisms--that candid
confession of badness which always inclines a kindly heart to believe
the very best of the penitent.

"Nevertheless, though Miss Cardross may be 'no bonnie,' and too good to
please your taste, I hope you will go often to the Manse in my absence,
and write me word how they are, otherwise I shall hear little--the
minister's letters are too voluminous to be frequent--and Miss
Cardross is not given to much correspondence."

Captain Bruce promised, and again the two young men sat silent,
listening to the eerie howling of the wind. It inclined both of them to
graver talk than was their habit when together.

"I wonder," said the earl, "whether this blast, according to popular
superstition, is come to carry many souls away with it 'on the wings of
the wind!' Where will they fly to the instant they leave the body? How
free and happy they must feel!"

"What an odd fancy! And not a particularly pleasant one," replied the
captain, with a shiver.

"Not unpleasant, to my mind. I like to think of these things. If I
were out of the body, I should, if I could fly back to Cairnforth."

"Pray don't imagine such dreadful things. May you live a hundred
years!"

"Not quite, I hope. A hundred years--of my life! No. the most
loving friend I have would not wish it for me." Then, suddenly, as with
an impulse created by the sad events of the day--the stormy night--
and the disturbed state of his own mental condition, inclining him to
any sort of companionship, "Cousin, I am going to trust you, specially,
in a matter of business which I wish named to the Cardrosses. I should
have done so before they left to-night. May I confide to you the
message?"

"Willingly. What is it about?" and the captain's keen black eyes
assumed an expression which, if the earl had noticed, he might have
repented of his trust. But no, he never would have noticed it. His
upright, honest nature, though capable of great reserve, was utterly
incapable of false pretense, deceit, or self-interested diplomacy. And
what was impossible in himself he never suspected in other people. He
thought his cousin shallow sometimes, but good-natured; a little
worldly, perhaps, but always well-meaning. That Captain Bruce could
have come to Cairnforth for any other purpose than mere curiosity, and
remained there for any motive except idleness and the pursuit of health,
did not occur to Lord Cairnforth.

"It is on the subject that you so much dislike my talking about--my
own death; a probability which I have to consider, as being rather
nearer to me than it is to most people. Should I die, will you remember
that my will lies at the office of Menteith and Ross, Edinburg?"

"So you have made your will?" said the captain, rather eagerly; then
added, "What a courageous man you are! I never durst make mine. But
then, to be sure, I have nothing to leave--except my sword, which I
hereby make over to you, well-beloved cousin."

"Thank you, though I should have very little use it. And that reminds
me to explain something. The day I made my will was, by an odd chance,
the day you arrived here. Had I know you then, I should have named you
in it, leaving you--I may as well tell you the sum--a thousand
pounds, in token of cousinly regard."

"You are exceedingly kind, but I am no fortune-hunter."

"I know that. Still, the legacy may not be useless. I shall make it
legally secure as soon as I get to Edinburg. In any case you are quite
safe, for I have mentioned you to my heir."

"Your heir! Who do you mean?" interrupted Captain Bruce, thrown off his
guard by excessive surprise.

The earl said, with a little dignity of manner, "It is scarcely needful
to answer your question. The title, you are aware, will be extinct; I
meant the successor to my landed property."

"Do I know the gentleman?"

"I named no gentleman."

"Not surely a lady? Not--" a light suddenly breaking in upon him, so
startling that it overthrew all his self-control, and even his good
breeding. "It can not possibly be Miss Helen Cardross?"

"Captain Bruce," said the earl, the angry color flashing all over his
pale face, "I was simply communicating a message to you; there was no
need for any farther questioning."

"I beg your pardon, Lord Cairnforth," returned the other, perceiving how
great a mistake he had made. "I have no right whatever to question, or
even to speculate concerning your heir, who is doubtless the fittest
person you could have selected."

"Most certainly," replied the earl, in a manner which put a final stop
to the conversation.

It was not resumed on any other topics; and shortly afterward, Malcolm
having come in with the announcement that the carriage had returned
from the Manse (at which Captain Bruce's sharp eyes were bent
scrutinizing on the earl's face, but learned nothing thence), the
cousins separated.

The captain had faithfully promised to be up at dawn to see the
travelers off, but an apology came from him to the effect that the
morning air was too damp for his lungs, and that he had spent a
sleepless night owning to his cough.

"An' nae wonder," remarked Malcolm, cynically, as he delivered the
message, "for I heard him a' through the wee hours walkin' and walkin'
up and doun, for a' the world like a wolf in a cage. And eh, but he's
dour the day!"

"A sickly man finds it difficult not to be dour at times," said the Earl
of Cairnforth.





Chapter 10

The earl reached Edinburg in the beginning of winter, and in those days
an Edinburg winter was a very gay season. That brilliant society, which
has now become a matter of tradition, was then in its zenith. Those
renowned support-parties, where great wits, learned philosophers, and
clever and beautiful women met together, a most enjoyable company, were
going on almost every night, and drawing into their various small
circles every thing that was most attractive in the larger circle
outside.

Lord Cairnforth was a long time before he suffered himself to be drawn
in likewise; but the business which detained him in Edinburg grew more
and more tedious; he found difficulties arise on every hand, and yet he
was determined not to leave until he had done all he wanted to do. Not
only in money, but by personal influence, which, now that he tried to
use it, he found was considerable, he furthered, in many ways, the
interests of Mr. Menteith's sons. The widow, too, a gentle, helpless
woman, soon discovered where to come to, on all occasions, for counsel
and aid. Never had the earl led such a busy life--one more active,
as far as his capabilities allowed.

Still, now and then time hung on his hands, and he felt a great lack of
companionship, until, by degrees, his name and a good deal of his
history got noised abroad, and he was perfectly inundated with
acquaintances. Of course, he had it at his own option how much or how
little he went out into the world. Every advantage that rank or fortune
could give was his already; but he had another possession still--his
own as much here as in the solitudes of Cairnforth, the art of making
himself "weel likit." The mob of "good society," which is not better
than any other mob, will run after money, position, talent, beauty, for
a time; but it requires a quality higher and deeper than these, and
distinct from them all, to produce lasting popularity.

This the earl had. In spite of his infirmities, he possessed the rare
power of winning love, of making people love him for his own sake. At
first, of course, his society was sought from mere curiosity, or even
through meaner motives; but gradually, like the good clergyman with whom

"Fools who came to scoff remained to pray,"

Those who visited him to stare at, or pity a fellow-creature so
afflicted, remained, attached by his gentleness, his patience, his
wonderful unselfishness. And some few, of noble mind, saw in him the
grandest and most religious spectacle that men can look upon--a
human soul which has not suffered itself to be conquered by adversity.

Very soon the earl gathered round him, besides acquaintances, a knot of
real friends, affectionate and true, who, in the charm of his cultivated
mind, and the simplicity of his good heart, found ample amends for every
thing that nature had denied him, the loss of which he bore so
cheerfully and uncomplainingly.

By-and-by, induced by these, the excellent people whom, as by mesmeric
attraction, goodness soon draws to itself, he began to go out a little
into society. It could be done, with some personal difficulty and pain,
and some slight trouble to his friends, which last was for a long time
his chief objection; for a merciful familiarity with his own affliction
had been brought about by time, and by the fact that he had never known
any other sort of existence, and only, as a blind person guesses at
colors, could speculate upon how it must feel to move about freely, to
walk and run. He had also lost much of his early shyness, and ceased to
feel any actual dread of being looked at. His chief difficulty was the
practical one of locomotion, and this for him was solved much easier
than if he had been a man of limited means. By some expenditure of
money, and by a good deal of ingenious contrivance, he managed to be
taken about as easily in Edinburg as at Cairnforth; was present at
church and law-court, theatre and concert-room, and at many a pleasant
reunion of pleasant people every where.

For in his heart Lord Cairnforth rather liked society. To him, whose
external resources were so limited, who could in truth do nothing for
his own amusement but read, social enjoyments were very valuable. He
took pleasure in watching the encounter of keen wits, the talk of clever
conversationalists. His own talent in that line was not small, though
he seldom used it in large circles; but with two or three only about
him, the treasures of his well-stored mind came out often very
brilliantly. Then he was so alive to all that was passing in the world
outside, and took as keen an interest in politics, social ethics, and
schemes of philanthropy as if he himself had been like other men,
instead of being condemned (or exalted--which shall we say? Dis
aliter visum!) to a destiny of such solemn and awful isolation.

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