A Noble Life Part 18

"Shall she be sent for?" suggested Lord Cairnforth.

"Oh no--not the least necessity. Besides, she says she is coming."

"She has long said that."

"But now she is determined to make the strongest effort to be with us at the New Year. Read her letter--it came yesterday; a week later than usual. I should have sent it up to the Castle, for it troubled me a little, especially the postscript; can you make it out? part of it is under the seal. It is in answer to what I told her of Duncan; he was always her pet, you know. How she used to carry him about the garden, even when he grew quite a big boy! Poor Helen!"

While the minister went on talking, feebly and wanderingly, in a way that at another time would have struck the earl as something new and rather alarming, Lord Cairnforth eagerly read the letter. It ended thus:

"Tell Dunnie I am awfully glad he is to be a minister. I hope all my brothers will settle down in dear old Scotland, work hard, and pay their way like honest men. And bid them, as soon as ever they can, to marry honest women--good, loving Scotch la.s.sies--no fremd (archaic: strange, foreign) folk. Tell them never to fear for 'poort.i.th cauld,'

as Mr. Burns wrote about; it's easy to bear, when it's honest poverty.

I would rather see my five brothers living on porridge and milk-- wives, and weans, and all--than see them like these foreigners, counts, barons, and princes though they be. Father, I hate them all.

And I mind always the way I was brought up, and that I was once a minister's daughter in dear and bonnie Cairnforth."

"What can she mean by that?" said Mr. Cardross, watching anxiously the earl's countenance as he read.

I suppose, what Helen always means, exactly what she says."

"That is true. You know we used always to say Helen could hold her tongue, though it wasn't easy to her, the dear la.s.sie; but she could not say what was not the fact, nor even give the impression of it.

Therefore, if she were unhappy, she would have told me?"

This was meant as a question, but it gained no answer.

"Surely," entreated the father, anxiously, "surely you do not think the la.s.sie is unhappy?"

"This is not a very happy world," said the earl, sadly. "But I do believe that if any thing had been seriously wrong with her Helen would have told us."

He spoke his real belief. But he did not speak of a dread far deeper, which had sometimes occurred to him, but which that sad and even bitter postscript now removed, that circ.u.mstances could change character, and that Helen Cardross and Helen Bruce were two different women.

As he went home, having arranged to come daily every forenoon to sit with the minister, and to read a little Greek with Duncan, lest the lad's studies should be interrupted, he decided that, in her father's state, which appeared to him the more serious the longer he considered it, it was right Helen should come home, and somebody, not Mr. Cardross, ought to urge it upon her. He determined to do this himself. And, lest means should be wanting--though of this he had no reason to fear, his information from all quarters having always been that the Bruce family lived more than well--luxuriously--he resolved to offer a gift with which he had not before dared to think of insulting independent Helen--money.

With difficulty and pains, not intrusting this secret to even his faithful secretary, he himself wrote a few lines, in his own feeble, shaky hand, telling her exactly how things were; suggesting her coming home, and inclosing wherewithal to do it, from "her affectionate old friend and cousin," from whom she need not hesitate to accept any thing.

But though he carefully, after long consideration, signed himself her "cousin," he did not once name Captain Bruce. He could not.

This done, he waited day after day, till every chance of Helen's not having had time to reply was long over, and still no answer came. That the letter had been received was more than probable, almost certain.

Every possible interpretation that common sense allowed Lord Cairnforth gave to her silence, and all failed. Then he let the question rest. To distrust her, Helen, his one pure image of perfection, was impossible.

He felt it would have killed him--not his outer life, perhaps, but the life of his heart, his belief in human goodness.

So he still waited, nor judged her either as daughter or friend, but contented himself with doing her apparently neglected duty for her-- making himself an elder brother to Duncan, and a son to the minister, and never missing a day without spending some hours at the Manse.

For almost the first time since her departure, Helen's regular monthly letter did not arrive, and the earl grew seriously alarmed. In the utmost perplexity, he was resolving in his own mind what next step to take--how, and how much he ought to tell of his anxieties to her father--when all difficulties were solved in the sharpest and yet easiest way by a letter from Helen herself--a letter so unlike Helen's, so un-neat, blurred, and blotted, that at first he did not even recognize it as hers.

"To the Right Honorable the Earl of Cairnforth:

"My Lord,--I have only just found your letter. The money inclosed was not there. I conclude it had been used for our journey hither; but it is gone, and I can not come to my dearest father. My husband is very ill, and my little baby only three weeks old. Tell my father this, and send me news of him soon. Help me, for I am almost beside myself with misery!

"Yours gratefully,

"Helen Bruce

"---- Street, Edinburg."

Edinburg! Then she was come home!

The earl had opened and read the letter with his secretary sitting by him. Yet, dull and not p.r.o.ne to notice things as the old man was, he was struck by an unusual tone of something very like exultation in his master's voice as he said,

"Mr. Mearns, call Malcolm to me; I must start for Edinburg immediately."

In the interval Lord Cairnforth thought rapidly over what was best to be done. To go at once to Helen, whatever her misery was, appeared to him beyond question. To take Mr. Cardross in his present state, or the lad Duncan, was not desirable: some people, good as they may be, are not the sort of people to be trusted in calamity. And Helen's other brothers were out and away in the world, scattered all over Scotland, earning, diligently and hardly, their daily bread.

There was evidently not a soul to go to her help except himself. Her brief and formal letter, breaking down into that piteous cry of "help me," seemed to come out of the very depths of despair. It pierced to the core of Lord Cairnforth's heart; and yet--and yet--he felt that strange sense of exultation and delight.

Even Malcolm noticed this.

"Your lordship has gotten gude news," said he. "Is it about Miss Helen?

She's coming home?"

"Yes. We must start for Edinburg at once, and we'll bring her back with us." He forgot for the moment the sick husband, the newborn baby-- every thing but Helen herself and her being close at hand. "It's only forty-eight hours journey to Edinburg now. We will travel post; I am strong enough, Malcolm; set about it quickly, for it must be done."

Malcolm knew his master too well to remonstrate. In truth, the whole household was so bewildered by this sudden exploit--for the wheels of life moved slowly enough ordinarily at Cairnforth--that before any body was quite aware what had happened, the earl and his two necessary attendants, Malcolm and Mr. Mearns--also Mrs. Campbell--Helen might want a woman with her--were traveling across country as fast as the only fast traveling of that era--relays of post-horses day and night--could carry them.

Lord Cairnforth, after much thought, left Helen's letter behind with Duncan Cardross, charging him to break the tidings gradually to the minister, and tell him that he himself was then traveling to Edinburg with all the speed that, in those days, money, and money alone, could procure. Oh, how he felt the blessing of riches! Now, whatever her circ.u.mstances were, or might have been once, misery, poverty, could never afflict Helen more. He was quite determined that from the time he brought them home, his cousin and his cousin's wife should inhabit Cairnforth Castle; that, whether Captain Bruce's life proved to be long or short, worthy or unworthy, he should be borne with, and forgiven every thing--for Helen's sake.

All the journey--sleeping or waking, day or night--Lord Cairnforth arranged or dreamed over his plans, until at ten o'clock the second night he found himself driving along the familiar Princes Street, with the grim Castle rock standing dark against the moonlight; while beyond, on the opposite side of what was then a mora.s.s, but is now railways and gardens, rose tier upon tier, like a fairy palace, the glittering lights of the old town of Edinburg.

Chapter 13

The earl reached Edinburg late at night. Mrs. Campbell entreated him to go to bed, and not seek out the street where the Bruces lived till morning.

"For I ken the place weel," said she, when she heard Lord Cairnforth inquiring for the address Helen had given. "It's ane o' thae high lands in the New Town--a grand flat wi' a fine ha' door--and then ye gang up an' up, till at the top flat ye find a bit nest like a bird's --and the folk living there are as ill off as a bird in winter-time."

The earl, weary as he had been, raised his head at this, and spoke decisively,

"Tell Malcolm to fetch a coach. I will go there tonight."

"Eh! Couldna ye bide till the morn? Ye'll just kill yourself,' my lamb," cried the affectionate woman, forgetting all her respect in her affection; but Lord Cairnforth understood it, and replied in the good old Scotch, which he always kept to warm his nurse's heart,

"Na, na, I'll no dee yet. Keep your heart content; we'll all soon be safe back at Cairnforth."

It seemed, in truth, as if an almost miraculous amount of endurance and energy had been given to that frail body for this hour of need. The earl's dark eyes were gleaming with light, and every tone of his voice was proud and manly, as the strong, manly soul, counteracting all physical infirmities, rose up for the protection for the one creature in all the world who to him had been most dear.

"You'll order apartments in the hotel, nurse. See that every thing is right and comfortable for Mrs. Bruce. I shall bring them back at once, if I can," was his last word as he drove off, alone with Malcolm: he wished to have no one with him who could possibly be done without.

It was nearly midnight when they stood at the foot of the high stair-- six stories high--and Captain Bruce, they learned, was inhabiting the topmost flat. Malcolm looked at the earl uneasily.