A Noble Life Part 16

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 a.s.sure 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 n.o.ble, 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 pa.s.sion. 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 la.s.sie" 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 grat.i.tude 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; G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 n.o.ble 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.