Book: A Noble Life

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




Yet he never put forward his affliction so as to make it painful to
those around him. Many, in the generation now nearly passed away, long
and tenderly remembered the little figure, placed motionless in the
centre of a brilliant circle--all clever men and charming women--
yet of whose notice the cleverest and most charming were always proud.
Not because he was an earl--nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg
then--but because he was himself. It was a pleasure just to sit
beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter,
or affectionate earnestness.

For every body loved him. Women, of course, did; they could not help
it; but men were drawn to him likewise, with the sort of reverential
tenderness that they would feel toward a suffering child or woman--
and something more--intense respect. His high sense of honor, his
true manliness, attracted the best of all the notabilities then
constituting that brilliant set; and there was not one of them worth
having for a friend at all who was not, in greater or less degree, the
friend of the Earl of Cairnforth.

But there was another side of his Edinburg life which did not appear
till long after he had quitted Modern Athens forever--nor even then
fully; not until he had passed quite away from the comments of this
mortal world. Then, many a struggling author, or worn-out professional
man, to whom life was all up-hill, or to whom sudden misfortune had made
the handful of "siller" (i.e. "silver") a matter of absolute salvation
to both body and soul--scores of such as these afterward recalled
hours or half hours spent in the cozy study in Charlotte Square, beside
the little figure in its chair--outwardly capable of so little, yet
endowed with both the power and will to do so much. Doing it so
generously, too, and withal so delicately, that the most sensitive went
away with their pride unwounded, and the most hardened and irreligious
were softened by it into thankfulness to One higher than their earthly
benefactor, who was only the medium through whom the blessings came.

These were accidental offices, intermingled with the principal duty
which the earl had undertaken, and which he carried out with unremitting
diligence--the care of his old friend's children. He placed some at
school, and others at college; those who were already afloat in the
world he aided with money and influence--an earl's name was so very
influential, as, with an amused smile, he occasionally discovered.

But, busy as his new life was, he never forgot his old life and his old
friends. He turned a deaf ear to all persuasions to take up his
permanent abode, according as his rank and fortune warranted, in
Edinburg. He was not unhappy there--he had plenty to do and to
enjoy; but his heart was in quiet Cairnforth. Several times,
troublesome, and even painful as the act of penmanship was to him, he
sent a few lines to the Manse. But it happened to be a very severe
winter, which made postal communication difficult. Besides, in those
days people neither wrote nor expected letters very often. During the
three months that Lord Cairnforth remained in Edinburg he only received
two epistles from Mr. Cardross, and those were in prolix and Johnsonian
style, on literary topics, and concerning the great and learned, with
whom the poor learned country minister had all his life longed to mix,
and had never been able.

Helen, who had scarcely penned a dozen letters in her life, wrote to him
once only, in reply to one of his, telling him she was doing every
thing as she thought he would best like; that Captain Bruce had assisted
her and her father in many ways, so far as his health allowed, but he
was very delicate still, and talked of going abroad, to the south of
France probably, as soon as possible. The captain himself never wrote
one single line.

At first the earl was a little surprised at this: however, it was not
his habit easily to take offense at his friends. He was quite without
that morbid self-esteem which is always imagining affronts or injuries.
If people liked him, he was glad; if they showed it, he believed them,
and rested in their affection with the simple faith of a child. But if
they seemed to neglect him, he still was ready to conclude the slight
was accidental, and he rarely grieved over it. Mere acquaintances had
not the power to touch his heart. And this gentle heart which, liking
many, loved but few, none whom he loved ever could really offend. He

"Grappled them to his soul with hooks of steel,"

And believed in them to the last extremity of faith that was possible.

So, whether Captain Bruce came under the latter category or the former,
his conduct was passed over, waiting for future explanation when Lord
Cairnforth returned home, as now, every day, he was wearying to do.

"But I will be back again in pleasant Edinburg next winter," said he to
one of his new friends, who had helped to make his stay pleasant, and
was sorely regretting his departure. "And I shall bring with me some
very old friends of mine, who will enjoy it as much as I shall myself."

And he planned, and even made preliminary arrangements for a house to be
taken, and an establishment formed, where the minister, Helen, and,
indeed, all the Cardross family, if they chose, might find a hospitable
home for the ensuing winter season.

"And how they will like it!" said he, in talking it over with Malcolm
one day. "How the minister will bury himself in old libraries, and Miss
Cardross will admire the grand shops and the beautiful views. And how
the boys will go skating on Dunsappi Loch, and golfing over Bruntsfield
Links. Oh, we'll make them all so happy!" added he, with pleasure
shining in those contented eyes, which drew half their light from the
joy that they saw, and caused to shine in the eyes around him.

It was after many days of fatiguing travel that Lord Cairnforth reached
the ferry opposite Cairnforth.

There the Castle stood, just as he had left it, its white front gleaming
against the black woods, then yellow and brown with autumn, but now only
black, or with a faint amber shadow running through them, preparatory to
the green of spring. Between lay the beautiful loch, looking ten times
more beautiful than ever to eyes which had not seen it for many long
months. How it danced and dimpled, as it had done before the squall in
which the earl's father was drowned, and as it would do many a time
again, after the fashion of these lovely, deceitful lochs, and of many
other things in this world.

"Oh, Malcolm, it's good to be at home!" said the earl, as he gazed
fondly at his white castle walls, at the ivy-covered kirk, and the gable
end of the Manse. He had been happy in Edinburg, but it was far sweeter
to come to the dear old friends that loved him. He seemed as if he had
never before felt how dear they were, and how indispensable to his
happiness.

"You are quite sure, Malcolm, that nobody knows we are coming? I wished
to go down at once to the Manse, and surprise them all."

'Ye'll easy do that, my lord, for there's naebody in sight but Sandy the
ferryman, wha little kens it's the earl himsel he's kepit waiting sae
lang."

"And how's a' wi' ye, Sandy?" said Lord Cairnforth, cheerily, when the
old man was rowing him across. "All well at home--at the Castle, the
Manse, and the clachan"?

"Ou ay, my lord. Except maybe the minister. He's no weel. He's
missing Miss Helen sair."

"Missing Miss Helen!" echoed the earl, turning pale.

"Ay, my lord. She gaed awa--it's just twa days sin syne. She was
sair vexed to leave Cairnforth and the minister."

"Leave her father?"

"A man maun leave father and mither, and cleave unto his wife--the
scripture says it. And a woman maun just do the like for her man, ye
ken. Miss Helen's awa to France, or some sic place, wi' her husband,
Captain Bruce."

The earl was sitting in the stern of the ferry-boat alone, no one being
near him but Sandy, and Malcolm, who had taken the second oar. To old
Sandy's communication he replied not a word--asked not a single
question more--and was lifted out at the end of the five-minutes'
passage just as usual. But the two men, though they also said nothing,
remembered the expression of his face to their dying day.

"Take me home, Malcolm; I will go to the Manse another time. Carry me
in your arms--the quickest way."

Malcolm lifted his master, and carried him, just as in the days when the
earl was a child, through the pleasant woods of Cairnforth, up to the
Castle door.

Nobody had expected them, and there was nothing ready.

"It's no matter--no matter," feebly said the earl, and allowed
himself to be placed in an arm-chair by the fire in the housekeeper's
room. There he sat passive.

"Will I bring the minister?" whispered Malcolm, respectfully. "Maybe
ye wad like to see him, my lord."

"No, no."

"His lordship's no weel please," said the housekeeper to Mrs. Campbell,
when the earl leant his head back, and seemed to be sleeping. "Is it
about the captain's marriage: Did he no ken?"

"Ne'er a word o't"

"That was great lack o'respect on the part o' Captain Bruce, and he sic
a pleasant young man; and Helen, too. Miss Helen tauld me her ain sel
that the earl was greatly set upon her marriage, for the captain gaed to
Edinburg just to tell him o't. And he wrote her word that his lordship
wished him no to bide a single day, but to marry Miss Helen and tak her
awa'. She'd never hae done it, in my opinion, but for that. For the
captain was at her ilka day an a' day lang, looking like a ghaist, and
telling' her he couldna live without her--she's a tender heart, Miss
Helen--and she was sae awfu' vexed for him, ye ken. For, sure,
Malcolm, the captain did seem almost like deein'."

"Deein'!" cried Malcolm, contemptuously, and then stopped. For while
they were talking the earl's eyes had open wide, and fixed with a
strange, sad, terrified look upon vacancy.

He remembered it all now--the last night he had spent at Cairnforth
with his cousin--the conversation which passed between them--the
questions asked, which, from his not answering, might have enabled the
captain to guess at the probable disposal of his property. He could
come to no other conclusion than that Captain Bruce had married Helen
with the same motive which must have induced his appearance at the
castle, and his eager and successful efforts to ingratiate himself there
--namely, money; that the fortune which he had himself missed might
accrue to him through his union with Lord Cairnforth's heiress.

How had he possibly accomplished this? How had he succeeded in making
good, innocent, simple Helen love him? For that she would never have
married without love the earl well knew. By what persuasions,
entreaties, or lies--the housekeeper's story involved some evident
lies--he had attained his end, remained, and must ever remain, among
the mysteries of the many mysterious marriages which take place every
day.

And it was all over. She was married, and gone away. Doubtless the
captain had taken his precautions to prevent any possible hinderance.
That it was a safe marriage legally, even though so little was known of
the bridegroom's antecedent life, seemed more than probable--certain,
seeing that the chief object he would have in this marriage was its
legality, to assure himself thereby of the property which should fall to
Helen in the event of the earl's decease. That he loved Helen for
herself, or was capable of loving her or any woman in the one noble,
true way, the largest limit of charitable interpretation could hardly
suppose possible.

Still, she had loved him--she must have done so--with that strange,
sudden idealization of love which sometimes seizes upon a woman who has
reached--more than reached--mature womanhood, and never
experienced the passion. And she had married him, and gone away with
him--left, for his sake, father, brothers, friends--her one
special friend, who was now nothing to her--nothing!

Whatever emotions the earl felt--and it would be almost sacrilegious
to intrude upon them, or to venture on any idle speculation concerning
them--one thing was clear; in losing Helen, the light of his eyes,
the delight of his life was gone.

He sat in his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was
a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility
of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so
soon grow used to his infirmity--sat until his room was prepared.
Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first
time in his life, he refused to leave for several days.

Not that he was ill--he declined any medical help, and declared that
he was only "weary, weary"--at which, after his long journey, no one
was surprised. He refused to see any body, even Mr. Cardross, and would
suffer no one beside him but his old nurse, Mrs. Campbell, whom he
seemed to cling to as when he was a little child. For hours she sat by
his bed, watching him, but scarcely speaking a word; and for hours he
lay, his eyes wide open, but with that blank expression in them which
Mrs. Campbell had first noticed when he sat by the housekeeper's fire.

"My bairn! My bairn!" was all she said--for she loved him. And,
somehow, her love comforted him. "Ye maun live, ye maun live. Maybe
they'll need ye yet," sobbed she, without explaining--perhaps without
knowing--who "they" meant. But she knew enough of her "bairn" to
know that if any thing would rouse him it was the thought of other folk.

"Do you think so, nurse? Do you think I can be of any good to any
creature in this world?"

"Ay, ye can, ye can, my lord--ye'd be awfully missed gin ye were to
dee."

"Then I'll no dee"--faintly smiling, and using the familiar speech of
his childhood. "Call Malcolm. I'll try to rise. And, nurse, if you
would have the carriage ordered--the pony carriage--I will drive
down to the Manse and see how Mr. Cardross is. He must be rather dull
without his daughter."

The earl did not--and it was long before he did--call her by name.
But after that day he always spoke of her as usual to every body; and
from that hour he rose from his bed, and went about his customary work
in his customary manner, taking up all his duties as if he had never
left them, and as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the even tenor
of his life--the strange, peaceful, and yet busy life led by the
solitary master of Cairnforth.





Chapter 11

It happened that, both this day and the day following, Mr. Cardross was
absent on one of his customary house-to-house visitings in remote
corners of his parish. So the earl, before meeting Helen's father, had
time to hear from other sources all particulars about her marriage--
at least all that were known to the little world of Cairnforth.

The minister himself had scarcely more to communicate, except the fact,
of which he seemed perfectly certain, that her absence would not exceed
six months, when Captain Bruce had faithfully promised to come back and
live upon his half pay in the little peninsula. Otherwise Mr. Cardross
was confident his "dear lassie" would never have left her father for any
man alive.

It was a marriage, externally, both natural and suitable; the young
couple being of equal age and circumstances, and withal tolerably well
acquainted with one another, for it appeared the captain had begun daily
visits to the Manse from the very day of Lord Cairnforth's departure.

"And he always spoke so warmly of you, expressed such gratitude toward
you, such admiration of you--I think it was that which won Helen's
heart. And when he did ask her to marry him, she would not accept him
for a good while, not till after he had seen you in Edinburg."

"Seen me in Edinburg!" repeated the earl, amazed, and then suddenly
stopped himself. It was necessary for Helen's sake, for every body's
sake, to be cautious over every word he said; to arrive at full
confirmation of his suspicions before he put into the poor father's
heart one doubt that Helen's marriage was not as happy or as honorable
as the minister evidently believed it to be.

"He told us you seemed so well," continued Mr. Cardross; "that you were
in the very whirl of Edinburg society, and delighted in it; that you
had said to him that nothing could be more to your mind than this
marriage, and that if it could be carried out without waiting for your
return, which was so very uncertain, you would be all the happier. Was
that not true?"

"No," said the earl.

"You wish she had waited till your return?"

"Yes."

The minister looked sorry; but still he evidently had not the slightest
suspicion that aught was amiss.

"You must forgive my girl," said he. "She meant no disrespect to her
dear old friend; but messages are so easily misconstrued. And then, you
see, a lover's impatience must be considered. We must excuse Captain
Bruce, I think. No wonder he was eager to get our Helen."

And the old man smiled rather sadly, and looked wistfully round the
Manse parlor, whence the familiar presence had gone, and yet seemed
lingering still--in her flower-stand, her little table, her
work-basket; for Mr. Cardross would not have a single article moved.
"She will like to see them all when she comes back again," said he.

"And you--were you quite satisfied with the marriage?" asked the
earl, making his question and the tone of it as commonplace and cautious
as he could.

"Why not? Helen loved him, and I loved Helen. Besides, my own married
life was so happy; God forbid I should grudge any happiness to my
children. I knew nothing but good of the lad; and you liked him too;
Helen told me you had specially charged her, if ever she had an
opportunity, to be kind to him."

Lord Cairnforth almost groaned.

"Captain Bruce declared you must have said it because you knew of his
attachment, which he had not had courage to express before, but had
rather appeared to slight her, to hide his real feelings, until he was
assured of your consent."

The earl listened, utterly struck dumb. The lies were so plausible, so
systematic, so ingeniously fitted together, that he could almost have
deluded himself into supposing them truth. No wonder, then, that they
had deluded simple Helen, and her even simpler and more unworldly
father.

And now the cruel question presented itself, how far the father was to
be undeceived?

The earl was, both by nature and circumstances, a reserved character;
that is, he did not believe in the duty of every body to tell out every
thing. Helen often argued with him, and even laughed at him, for this;
but he only smiled silently, and held to his own opinion, taught by
experience. He knew well that her life--her free open, happy life,
was not like his life, and never could be. She had yet to learn that
bitter but salutary self-restraint, which, if it has to suffer, often
for others' sake as well as for its own, prefers to suffer alone.

But Lord Cairnforth had learned this to the full. Otherwise, as he sat
in the Manse parlor, listening patiently to Helen's father, and in the
newness and suddenness of her loss, and the strong delusion of his own
fond fancy, imagining every minute he heard her step on the stair and
her voice in the hall, he must have utterly broken down.

He did not do so. He maintained his righteous concealment, his noble
deceit--to the very last; spending the whole evening with Mr.
Cardross, and quitting him without having betrayed a word of what he
dreaded--what he was almost sure of.

Though the marriage might be, and no doubt was, a perfectly legal and
creditable marriage in the eye of the world, still, in the eyes of
honest men, it would be deemed altogether unworthy and unfortunate, and
he knew the minister would think it so. How could he tell the poor old
father, who had so generously given up his only daughter for the one
simple reason--sufficient reason for any righteous marriage--
"Helen loved him," that his new son-in-law was proved by proof
irresistible to be a deliberate liar, a selfish, scheming, mercenary
knave?

So, under this heavy responsibility, Lord Cairnforth decided to do what,
in minor matters, he had often noticed Helen do toward her gentle and
easily-wounded father--to lay upon him no burdens greater than he
could bear, but to bear them herself for him. And in this instance the
earl's only means of so doing, for the present at least, was by taking
refuge in that last haven of wounded love and cruel suffering--
silence.

The earl determined to maintain a silence unbroken as the grave
regarding all the past, and his own relations with Captain Bruce--
that is, until he saw the necessity for doing otherwise.

One thing, however, smote his heart with a sore pang, which, after a
week or so, he could not entirely conceal from Mr. Cardross. Had Helen
left him--him, her friend from childhood--no message, no letter?
Had her happy love so completely blotted out old ties that she could go
away without one word of farewell to him?

The minister thought not. He was sure she had written; she had said she
should, the night before her marriage, and he had heard her moving about
in her room, and even sobbing, he fancied, long after the house was gone
to rest. Nay, he felt sure he had seen her on her wedding morning give
a letter to Captain Bruce, saying "it was to be posted to Edinburg."

"Where, you know, we believed you then were, and would remain for some
time. Otherwise I am sure my child would have waited, that you might
have been present at her marriage. And to think you should have come
back the very next day! She will be so sorry!"

"Do you think so?" said the earl, sadly, and said no more.

But, on his return to the Castle, he saw lying on his study-table a
letter, in the round, firm, rather boyish hand, familiar to him as that
of his faithful amanuensis of many years.

"It's surely frae Miss Helen--Mrs. Bruce, that is," said Malcolm,
lifting it. "But folk in love are less mindfu' than ordinar. She's
directed it to Charlotte Square, Edinburg, and then carried it up to
London wi' hersel', and some other body, the captain, I think, has
redirected it to Cairnforth Castle."

"No remarks, Malcolm," interrupted the earl, with unwonted sharpness.
"Break the seal and lay the letter so that I can read it. Then you may
go."

Bur, when his servant had gone, he closed his eyes in utter hopelessness
of dejection, for he saw how completely Helen had been deceived.

Her letter ran thus--her poor, innocent letter--dated ever so long
ago--indeed, the time when she had told her father she should write
--the night before her marriage-day:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am very busy, but have striven hard to find an
hour in which to write to you, for I do not think people forget their
friends because they have gotten other people to be mindful of too. I
think a good and happy love only makes other loves feel closer and
dearer. I am sure I have been greeting (Old English: weeping) like a
bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married,
whenever I called to mind you and my dear father. You will be very good
to him while I am away? But I need not ask you that. Six months, he
says--I mean Captain Bruce--will, according to the Edinburg
doctor's advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a
warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be
back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for
he declares he likes no other place half so well.

"I am right to go with him for these six months--am I not? But I
need not ask; you sent me word so yourself. He had nobody to take care
of him--nobody in the world but me. His sisters are gay, lively
girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost
strangers. He tells me I might as well send him away to die at once,
unless I went with him as his wife. So I go.

"I hope he will come home quite strong and well, and able to begin
building our cottage on that wee bit of ground on the hill-side above
Cairnforth which you have promised to give to him. I am inexpressibly
happy about it. We shall all live so cheerily together--and meet
every day--the Castle, the Manse, and the Cottage. When I think of
that, and of my coming back, I am almost comforted for this sad going
away--leaving my dear father, and the boys, and you.

"Papa has been so good to me, you do not know. I shall never forget it
--nor will Ernest. Ernest thought he would stand in the way of our
marriage, but he did not. He said I must choose for myself, as he had
done when he married my dearest mother; that I had been a good girl to
him, and a good daughter would make a good wife; also that a good wife
would not cease to be a good daughter because she was married--
especially living close at hand, as we shall always live: Ernest has
promised it.

"Thus, you see, nobody I love will lose me at all, nor shall I forget
them: I should hate myself if it were possible. I shall be none the
less a daughter to my father--none the less a friend to you. I will
never, never forget you, my dear!" (here the writing became blurred, as
if large drops had fallen on the paper while she wrote.) "It is twelve
o'clock, and I must bid you good-night--and God bless you ever and
ever! The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to
you.

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