A Noble Life Part 19

"The top flat! Miss Helen canna be vera well aff, I doubt. Will I gang up and see, my lord"?

"No, I will go myself. Carry me, Malcolm."

And, in the old childish way, the big Highlander lifted his master up in his arms, and carried him, flight after flight, to the summit of the long dark stair. It narrowed up to a small door, very mean and shabby-looking, from the keyhole of which, when Malcolm hid his lantern, a light was seen to gleam.

"They're no awa' to their beds yet, my lord. Will I knock?"

Lord Cairnforth had no time to reply, if indeed he could have replied; for Malcolm's footsteps had been heard from within, and opening the door with an eager "Is that you, doctor?" there stood before them, in her very own likeness, Helen Cardross.

At least a woman like enough to the former Helen to leave no doubt it was herself. But a casual acquaintance would never have recognized her.

The face, once so round and rosy, was sharp and thin; the cheek-bones stood out; the bright complexion was faded; the ma.s.ses of flaxen curls --her chief beauty--were all gone; and the thin hair was drawn up close under a cap. Her dress, once the picture of neatness, was neat still, but the figure had become gaunt and coa.r.s.e, and the shabby gown hung upon her in forlorn folds, as if put on carelessly by one who had neither time nor thought to give to appearances.

She was evidently sitting up watching, and alone. The rooms which her door opened to view were only two, this topmost flat having been divided in half, and each half made into just "a but and a ben," and furnished in the meanest fashion of lodgings to let.

"Is it the doctor?" she said again, shading her light and peering down the dark stair.

"Helen!"

She recognized at once the little figure in Malcolm's arms.

"You--you! And you have come to me--come your own self! Oh, thank G.o.d!"

She leant against the doorway--not for weeping; she looked like one who had wept till she could weep no more, but breathing hard in heavy breaths, like sobs.

"Set me down, Malcolm, somewhere--any where. Then go outside."

Malcolm obeyed, finding a broken arm-chair and settling his master therein. Then, as he himself afterward told the story, though not till many years after, when nothing he told about that dear master's concerns could signify any more, he "gaed awa' doun and grat like a bairn."

Lord Cairnforth sat silent, waiting till Helen had recovered herself-- Helen, whom, however changed, he would have known among a thousand. And then, with his quick observation, he took in as much of her circ.u.mstances as was betrayed by the aspect of the room, evidently kitchen, dining-room, and bedroom in one; for at the far end, close to the door that opened into the second apartment, which seemed a mere closet, was one of those concealed beds so common in Scotland, and on it lay a figure which occasionally stirred, moaned, or coughed, but very feebly, and for the most part lay still--very still.

Its face, placed straight on the pillow--and as the fire blazed up, the sharp profile being reflected in grotesque distinctness on the wall behind--was a man's face, thin and ghastly, the skin tightly drawn over the features, as is seen in the last stage of consumption.

Lord Cairnforth had never beheld death--not in any form. But he felt, by instinct, that he was looking upon it now, or the near approach to it, in the man who lay there, too rapidly pa.s.sing into unconsciousness even to notice his presence--Helen's husband, Captain Bruce.

The dreadful fascination of the sight drew his attention even from Helen herself. He sat gazing at his cousin, the man who had deceived and wronged him, and not him only, but those dearer to him than himself ---the man whom, a day or two ago, he had altogether hated and despised.

He dared do neither now. A heavier hand than that of mortal justice was upon his enemy. Whatever Captain Bruce was, whatever he had been, he was now being taken away from all human judgment into the immediate presence of Him who is at once the Judge and the Pardoner of sinners.

Awe-struck, the earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days--carried away into the other world--while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the earl's chair.

"He is fast going," said she.

"I see that."

"In an hour or two, the doctor said."

"Then I will stay, if I may?"

"Oh yes."

Helen said it quite pa.s.sively; indeed, her whole appearance as she moved about the room, and then took her seat by her husband's side, indicated one who makes no effort either to express or to restrain grief--who has, in truth, suffered till she can suffer no more.

The dying man was not so near death as the doctor had thought, for after a little he fell into what seemed a natural sleep. Helen leant her head against the wall and closed her eyes. But that instant was heard from the inner room a cry, the like of which Lord Cairnforth had never heard before--the sharp, waking cry of a very young infant.

In a moment Helen started up--her whole expression changed; and when, after a short disappearance, she re-entered the room with her child, who had dropped contentedly asleep again, nestling to her bosom, she was perfectly transformed. No longer the plain, almost elderly woman; she had in her poor worn face the look--which makes any face young, nay, lovely--the mother's look. Fate had not been altogether cruel to her; it had given her a child.

"Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers-- the small soft cheek--the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld.

"It is a bonnie bairn, as you say; G.o.d bless it!" which, as she afterward told him, was the first blessing ever breathed over the child.

"What is its name:" he asked by-and-by, seeing she expected more notice taken of it.

"Alexander Cardross--after my father. My son is a born Scotsman too --an Edinburg laddie. We were coming home, as fast as we could, to Cairnforth. He"--glancing toward the bed--"he wished it."

Thus much thought for her, the dying man had shown. He had been unwilling to leave his wife forlorn in a strange land. He had come "fast as he could," that her child might be born and her husband die at Cairnforth--at least so the earl supposed, nor subsequently found any reason to doubt. It was a good thing to hear then--good to remember afterward.

For hours the earl sat in the broken chair, with Helen and her baby opposite, watching and waiting for the end.

It did not come till near morning. Once during the night Captain Bruce opened his eyes and looked about him, but either his mind was confused, or--who knows?--made clearer by the approach of death, for he evinced no sign of surprise at the earl's presence in the room. He only fixed upon him a long, searching, inquiring gaze, which seemed to compel an answer.

Lord Cairnforth spoke:

"Cousin, I am come to take home with me your wife and child. Are you satisfied?"

"Yes."

"I promise you they shall never want. I will take care of them always."

There was a faint a.s.senting movement of the dying head, and then, just as Helen went out of the room with her baby, Captain Bruce followed her with his eyes, in which the earl thought was an expression almost approaching tenderness. "Poor thing--poor thing! Her long trouble is over."

These were the last words he ever said, for shortly afterward he again fell into a sleep, out of which he pa.s.sed quietly and without pain into sleep eternal. They looked at him, and he was still breathing; they looked at him a few minutes after, and he was, as Mr. Cardross would have expressed it, "away"--far, far away--in His safe keeping with whom abide the souls of both the righteous and the wicked, the living and the dead.

Let Him judge him, for no one else ever did. No one ever spoke of him but as their dead can only be spoken of either to or by the widow and the fatherless.

Without much difficulty--for, after her husband's death, Helen's strength suddenly collapsed, and she became perfectly pa.s.sive in the earl's hands and in those of Mrs. Campbell--Lord Cairnforth learned all he required about the circ.u.mstances of the Bruce family.

They were absolutely penniless. Helen's boy had been born only a day or two after their arrival at Edinburg. Her husband's illness increased suddenly at the last, but he had not been quite incapacitated till she had gained a little strength, so as to be able to nurse him. But how she had done it--how then and for many months past she had contrived to keep body and soul together, to endure fatigue, privation, mental anguish, and physical weakness, was, according to good Mrs. Campbell, who heard and guessed a great deal more than she chose to tell, "just wonderful'." It could only be accounted for by Helen's natural vigor of const.i.tution, and by that preternatural strength and courage which Nature supplies to even the saddest form of motherhood.

And now her brief term of wifehood--she had yet not been married two years--was over forever, and Helen Bruce was left a mother only. It was easy to see that she would be one of those women who remain such-- mothers, and nothing but mothers, to the end of their days.

"She's ower young for me to say it o' her," observed Mrs. Campbell, in one of the long consultations that she and the earl held together concerning Helen, who was of necessity given over almost exclusively to the good woman's charge; "but ye'll see, my lord, she will look nae mair at any mortal man. She'll just spend her days in tending that wean o'

hers--and a sweet bit thing it is, ye ken--by-and-by she'll get blithe and bonnie again. She'll be aye gentle and kind, and no dreary, but she'll never marry. Puir Miss Helen! She'll be ane o' thae widows that the apostle tells o'--that are 'widows indeed'."

And Mrs. Campbell, who herself was one of the number, heaved a sigh-- perhaps for Helen, perhaps for herself, and for one whose very name was now forgotten; who had gone down to the bottom of Loch Beg when the Earl's father was drowned, and never afterward been seen, living or dead, by any mortal eye.

The earl gave no answer to his good nurse's gossip. He contented himself with making all arrangements for poor Helen's comfort, and taking care that she should be supplied with every luxury befitting not alone Captain Bruce's wife and Mr. Cardross's daughter, but the "cousin"

of the Earl of Cairnforth. And now, whenever he spoke of her, it was invariably and punctiliously as "my cousin."

The baby too--Mrs. Campbell's truly feminine soul was exalted to infinte delight and pride at being employed by the earl to procure the most magnificent stock of baby clothes that Edinburg could supply. No young heir to a peerage could be appareled more splendidly than was, within a few days, Helen's boy. He was the admiration of the whole hotel; and when his mother made some weak resistance, she received a gentle message to the effect that the Earl of Cairnforth begged, as a special favor, to be allowed to do exactly as he liked with his little "cousin".