A Noble Life Part 17

"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 n.o.body to take care of him--n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 G.o.d bless you ever and ever! The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to you.

"Your faithful and loving friend,

"Helen Cardross."

Thus she had written, and thus he sat and read--these two, who had been and were so dear to one another. Perhaps the good angels, who watch over human lives and human destinies, might have looked with pity upon both.

As for Helen's father, and Helen herself too, if (as some severe judges may say) they erred in suffering themselves to be thus easily deceived --in believing a man upon little more than his own testimony, and in loving him as bad men are sometimes loved, under a strong delusion, by even good women, surely the errors of unworldliness, unselfishness, and that large charity which "thinketh no evil" are not so common in this world as to be quite unpardonable. Better, tenfold, to be sinned against than sinning.

"Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart which, if believed, Had bless'd one's life with true believing."

Lord Cairnforth did not think this at the time, but he learned to do so afterward. He learned, when time brought round its divine amende, neither to reproach himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion or deliberate injustice.

Meanwhile, the marriage was accomplished. All that Helen's fondest friend could do was to sit and watch the event of things, as the earl determined to watch--silently, but with a vigilance that never slept.

Not pa.s.sively neither. He took immediate steps, by means which his large fortune and now wide connection easily enable him to employ, to find out exactly the position of Helen's husband, both his present circ.u.mstances, and, so far as was possible, his antecedents, at home or abroad. For after the discovery of so many atrocious, deliberate lies, every fact that Captain Bruce had stated concerning himself remained open to doubt.

However, the lies were apparently that sort of falsehood which springs from a brilliant imagination, a lax conscience, and a ready tongue-- p.r.o.ne to say whatever comes easiest and upper most. Also, because probably following the not uncommon Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means, he had, for whatever reason he best knew, determined to marry Helen Cardross, and took his own measures accordingly.

The main facts of his self-told history turned out to be correct. He was certainly the identical Ernest Henry Bruce, only surviving son of Colonel Bruce, and had undoubtedly been in India, a captain in the Company's service. His medals were veritable--won by creditable bravery. No absolute moral turpitude could be discovered concerning him --only a careless, reckless life; and utter indifference to debt; and a convenient readiness to live upon other people's money rather than his own--qualities not so rare, or so sharply judged in the world at large, as they were likely to be by the little world of innocent, honest Cairnforth.

And yet he was young--he had married a good wife--he might mend.

At present, plain and indisputable, his character stood-- good-natured, kindly--perhaps not even unlovable--but dest.i.tute of the very foundations of all that const.i.tutes worth in a man--or woman either--truthfulness, independence, honor, honesty. And he was Helen's husband--Helen, the true and the good; the poor minister's daughter, who had been brought up to think that it was better to starve upon porridge and salt than to owe any one a halfpenny! What sort of a marriage could it possibly turn out to be?

To this question, which Lord Cairnforth asked himself continually, in an agony of doubt, no answer came--no clue whatsoever, though, from even the first week, Helen's letters reached the Manse as regularly as clock work. But they were merely outside letters--very sweet and loving --telling her father every thing that could interest him about foreign places, persons, and things; only of herself and her own feelings saying almost nothing. It was unlikely she should: the earl laid this comfort to his soul twenty times a day. She was married now; she could not be expected to be frank as in her girlhood; still, this total silence, so unnatural to her candid disposition, alarmed him.

But there was no resource--no help. Into that secret chamber which her own hand thus barred, no other hand could presume to break. No one could say--ought to say to a wife, "Your husband is a scoundrel."

And besides, (to this hope Lord Cairnforth clung with a desperation heroic as bitter), Captain Bruce might not be an irredeemable scoundrel; and he might--there was still a chance--have married Helen not altogether from interested motives. She was so lovable that he might have loved her, or have grown to love her, even though he had slighted her at first.

"He must have loved her--he could not help it," groaned the earl, inwardly, when the minister and others stabbed him from time to time with little episodes of the courting days--the captain's devotedness to Helen, and Helen's surprised, fond delight at being so much "made of"

by the first lover who had ever wooed her, and a lover whom externally any girl would have been proud of. And then the agonized cry of another faithful heart went up to heaven--"G.o.d grant he may love her; that she may be happy--anyhow--any where!"

But all this while, with the almost morbid prevision of his character, Lord Cairnforth took every precaution that Helen should be guarded, as much as was possible, in case there should befall her that terrible calamity, the worst that can happen to a woman--of being compelled to treat the husband and father, the natural protector, helper, and guide of herself and her children, as not only her own, but their natural enemy.

The earl did not cancel Helen's name from his will; he let every thing stand as before her marriage; but he took the most sedulous care to secure her fortune unalienably to herself and her offspring. This, because, if Captain Bruce were honest, such precaution could not affect him in the least: man and wife are one flesh--settlements were a mere form, which love would only smile at, and at which any honorable man must be rather glad of than otherwise. But if her husband were dishonorable, Helen was made safe, so far as worldly matters went-- safe, except for the grief from which, alas! no human friend can protect another--a broken heart!

Was her heart broken or breaking?

The earl could not tell nor even guess. She left them at home not a loophole whereby to form a conjecture. Her letters came regularly, from January until May, dated from all sorts of German towns, chiefly gambling towns; but the innocent dwellers at Cairnforth (save the earl) did not know this fact. They were sweet, fond letters as ever-- mindful, with a pathetic minuteness, of every body and every thing at the dear old home; but not a complaint was breathed--not a murmur of regret concerning her marriage. She wrote very little of her husband; gradually, Lord Cairnforth fancied, less and less. They had not been to the south of France, as was ordered by the physicians, and intended. He preferred, she said, these German town, where he met his own family-- his father and sisters. Of these, as even the minister himself at length noticed with surprise, Helen gave no description, favorable or otherwise; indeed, did not say of her husband's kindred, beyond the bare fact that she was living with them, one single word.

Eagerly the earl scanned her letters--those long letters, which Mr.

Cardross brought up immediately to the Castle and then circulated their contents round the whole parish with the utmost glee and pride; for the whole parish was in its turn dying to hear news of "Miss Helen." Still, nothing could be discovered of her real life and feelings. And at last her friend's fever of uneasiness calmed down a little; he contented himself with still keeping a constant watch over all her movements-- speaking to no one, trusting no one, except so far as he was obliged to trust the old clerk who was once sent down by Mr. Menteith, and who had now come to end his days at Cairnforth, in the position of the earl's private secretary--as faithful and fond as a dog, and as safely silent.

So wore the time away, as it wears on with all of us, through joy and sorrow, absence or presence, with cheerful fullness or aching emptiness of heart. It brought spring back, and summer--the sunshine to the hills, and the leaves, and flowers, and birds to the woods; it brought the earl's birthday--kept festively as ever by his people, who loved him better every year; but it did not bring Helen home to Cairnforth.

Chapter 12

Life, when we calmly a.n.a.lyze it, is made up to us all alike of three simple elements--joy, sorrow, and work. Some of us get tolerably equal proportions of each of these; some unequal--or we fancy so; but in reality, as the ancient sage says truly, "the same things come alike to all."

The Earl of Cairnforth, in his imperfect fragment of a life, had had little enough of enjoyment; but he knew how to endure better than most people. He had, however, still to learn that existence is not wholly endurance; that a complete human life must have in it not only submission but resistance; the fighting against evil and in defense of good; the struggle with divine help to overcome evil with good; and finally the determination not to sit down tamely to misery but to strive after happiness--lawful happiness, both for ourselves and others. In short, not only pa.s.sively to accept joy or grief, but to take means to secure the one and escape the other; to "work out our own salvation" for each day, as we are told to do it for an eternity, though with the same divine limitation--humbling to all pride, and yet encouraging to ceaseless effort--"for it is G.o.d that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

That self-absorption of loss, which follows all great anguish; that shrinking up unto one's self, which is the first and most natural instinct of a creature smitten with a sorrow not unmingled with cruel wrong, is, with most high natures, only temporary. By-and-by comes the merciful touch which says to the lame, "Arise and walk;" to the sick, "Take up thy bed and go into thine house." And the whisper of peace is, almost invariably, a whisper of labor and effort: there is not only something to be suffered, but something to be done.

With the earl this state was longer in coming, because the prior collapse did not come to him at once. The excitement of perpetual expectation--the preparing for some catastrophe, which he felt sure was to follow, and the incessant labor entailed by his wide enquiries, in which he had no confidant but Mr. Mearns, the clerk, and him he trusted as little as possible, lest any suspicion or disgrace should fall upon Helen's husband--all this kept him in a state of unnatural activity and strength.

But when the need for action died away; when Helen's letters betrayed nothing; and when, though she did not return, and while expressing most bitter regret, yet gave sufficiently valid reasons for not returning in her husband's still delicate health--after June, Lord Cairnforth fell into a condition, less of physical than mental sickness, which lasted a long time, and was very painful to himself, as well as to those that loved him. He was not ill, but his usual amount of strength--so small always--became much reduced; neither was he exactly irritable --his sweet temper never could sink into irritability; but he was, as Malcolm expressed it, "dour," difficult to please; easily fretted about trifles; inclined to take sad and cynical views of things.

This might have been increased by certain discoveries, which, during the summer, when he came to look into his affairs, Lord Cairnforth made. He found that money which he had entrusted to Captain Bruce for various purposes had been appropriated, or misappropriated, in different ways --conduct scarcely exposing the young man to legal investigation, and capable of being explained away as "carelessness"--"unpunctuality in money matters"--and so on, but conduct of which no strictly upright, honorable person would ever have been guilty. This fact accounted for another--the captain's having expressed ardent grat.i.tude for a sum which he said the earl had given him for his journey and marriage expenses, which, though Mr. Cardross's independent spirit rather revolted from the gift, at least satisfied him about Helen's comfort during her temporary absence. And once more, for Helen's sake, the earl kept silence. But he felt as if every good and tender impulse of his nature were hardening into stone.

Hardened at the core Lord Cairnforth could never be; no man can whose heart has once admitted into its deepest sanctuary the love of One who, when all human loves fail, still whispers, "We will come in unto him, and make our abode with him"--ay, be it the forlornest bodily tabernacle in which immortal soul ever dwelt. But there came an outer crust of hardness over his nature which was years before it quite melted away. Common observers might not perceive it--Mr. Cardross even did not; still it was there.

The thing was inevitable. Right or wrong, deservedly or undeservedly, most of us have at different crises of our lives known this feeling-- the bitter sense of being wronged; of having opened one's heart to the sunshine, and had it all blighted and blackened with frost; of having laid one's self down in a pa.s.sion of devotedness for beloved feet to walk upon, and been trampled upon, and beaten down to the dust. And as months slipped by, and there came no Helen, this feeling, even against his will and his conscience, grew very much upon Lord Cairnforth. In time it might have changed him to a bitter, suspicious, disappointed cynic, had there not also come to him, with strong conviction, one truth --a truth preached on the sh.o.r.es of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago --the only truth that can save the wronged heart from breaking-- that he who gives away only a cup of cold water shall in no wise lose his reward. Still, the reward is not temporal, and is rarely rewarded in kind. He--and He alone--to whom the debt is due, repays it; not in our, but in his own way. One only consolation remains to the sufferers from ingrat.i.tude, but that one is all-sufficing: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me."

All autumn, winter, and during another spring and summer, Helen's letters--most fond, regular, and (to her father) satisfactory-- contained incessant and eager hopes of return, which were never fulfilled. And gradually she ceased to give any reason for their non-fulfillment, simply saying, with a sad brevity of silence, which one, at least, of her friends knew how to comprehend and appreciate, that her coming home at present was "impossible."

"It's very true," said the good minister, disappointed as he was: "a man must cleave to his wife, and a woman to her husband. I suppose the captain finds himself better in warm countries--he always said so.

My bairn will come back when she can--I know she will. And the boys are very good--specially Duncan."

For Mr. Cardross had now, he thought, discovered germs of ability in his youngest boy, and was concentrating all his powers in educating him for college and the ministry. This, and his growing absorption in his books, reconciled him more than might have been expected to his daughter's absence; or else the inevitable necessity of things, which, as we advance in years, becomes so strange and consoling an influence over us, was working slowly upon the good old minister. He did not seem heart-broken or even heart-wounded--he did his parish work with unfailing diligence; but as, Sunday after Sunday, he pa.s.sed from the Manse garden through the kirk-yard, where, green and moss-covered now, was the one white stone which bore the name of "Helen Lindsay, wife of the Reverend Alexander Cardross," he was often seen to glance at it less sorrowfully than smilingly. Year by year, the world and its cares were lessening and slipping away from him, as they had long since slipped from her who once shared them all. She now waited for him in that eternal reunion which the marriage union teaches, as perhaps none other can, to realize as a living fact and natural necessity.

But it was different with the earl. Sometimes, in an agony of bitterness, he caught himself blaming her--Helen--whom her old father never blamed; wondering how much she had found out of her husband's conduct and character; speculating whether it was possible to touch pitch and not be defiled; and whether the wife of Captain Bruce had become in any way different from, and inferior to, innocent Helen Cardross.

Lord Cairnforth had never answered her letter--he could not, without being a complete hypocrite; and she had not written again. He did not expect it--scarcely wished it--and yet the blank was sore. More and more he withdrew from all but necessary a.s.sociations, shutting himself up in the Castle for weeks together--neither reading, nor talking much to any one, but sitting quite still--he always sat quite still--by the fireside in his little chair. He felt creeping over him that deadness to external things which makes pain itself seem comparatively almost sweet. Once he was heard to say, looking wistfully at Mrs. Campbell, who had been telling him with many tears, of a "freend o' hers" who had just died down at the clachan, "Nurse, I wish I could greet like you."

The first thing which broke up in his heart this bitter, blighting frost was, as so often happens, the sharp-edged blow of a new trouble.

He had not been at the Manse for two or three weeks, and had not even heard of the family for several days, when, looking up from his seat in church, he was startled by the apparition of an unfamiliar face in the pulpit--a voluble, flowery-tongued, foolish young a.s.sistant, evidently caught haphazard to fill the place which Mr. Cardross, during a long term of years, had never vacated, except at communion seasons.

It gave his faithful friend and pupil a sensation almost of pain to see any new figure there, and not the dear old minister's, with his long white hair, his earnest manner, and his simple, short sermon. Shorter and simpler the older he grew, till he often declared he should end by preaching like the beloved apostle John, who, tradition says, in his latter days, did nothing but repeat, over and over again, to all around him, his one exhortation--he, the disciple whom Jesus loved--

"Little children, love one another."

On inquiry after service, the earl found that Mr. Cardross had been ailing all week, and had had on Sat.u.r.day to procure in haste this subst.i.tute. But, on going to the Manse, the earl found him much as usual, only complaining of a numbness in his arm.

"And," he said, with a composure very different from his usual nervousness about the slightest ailment, "Now I remember, my mother died of paralysis. I wish Helen would come home."