A Noble Life Part 20

And every morning, punctual to the hour, the earl had himself taken up stairs into the infantile kingdom of which Mrs. Campbell was installed once more as head nurse, where he would sit watching with an amused curiosity, that was not without its pathos, the little creature so lately come into the world--to him, unfamiliar with babies, such a wondrous mystery. Alas! A mystery which it was his lot to behold--as all the joys of life--from the outside.

But, though life's joys were forbidden him, its duties seemed to acc.u.mulate daily. There was Mr. Cardross to be kept patient by the a.s.surance that all was well, and that presently his daughter and his grandchild would be coming home. There was Alick Cardross, now a young clerk in the office of Menteith & Ross, to be looked after, and kept from agitating his sister by any questionings; and there was a tribe of young Menteiths always needing a.s.sistance or advice--now and then something more tangible than advice. Then there were the earl's Edinburg friends, who thronged round him in hearty welcome as soon as ever they heard he was again in the good old city, and would willingly have drawn him back again into that brilliant society which he had enjoyed so much.

He enjoyed it still--a little; and during the weeks that elapsed before Helen was able to travel, or do any thing but lie still and be taken care of, he found opportunity to mingle once more among his former a.s.sociates. But his heart was always in that quiet room which he only entered once a day, where the newly-made widow sat with her orphan child at her bosom, and waited for Time, the healer, to soothe and bind up the inevitable wounds.

At last the day arrived when the earl, with his little cortege of two carriages, one his own, and the other containing Helen, her baby, and Mrs. Campbell, quitted Edinburg, and, traveling leisurely, neared the sh.o.r.es of Loch Beg. They did not come by the ferry, Lord Cairnforth having given orders to drive round the head of the loch, as the easiest and most un.o.btrusive way of bringing Helen home. Much he wondered how she bore it--the sight of the familiar hills--exactly the same-- for it was the same time of year, almost the very day, when she had left Cairnforth; but he could not inquire. At length, after much thought, during the last stage of the journey, he bade Malcolm ask Mrs. Bruce if she would leave her baby for a little and come into the earl's carriage, which message she obeyed at once.

These few weeks of companionship, not constant, but still sufficiently close, had brought them back very much into their old brother and sister relation, and though nothing had been distinctly said about it, Helen had accepted pa.s.sively all the earl's generosity both for herself and her child. Once or twice, when he had noticed a slight hesitation of uneasiness in her manner, Lord Cairnforth had said, "I promised him, you remember," and this had silenced her. Besides she was too utterly worn out and broken down to resist any kindness. She seemed to open her heart to it--Helen's proud, sensitive, independent heart--much as a plant, long dried up, withered, and trampled upon, opens itself to the sunshine and the dew.

But now her health, both of body and mind, had revived a little; and as she sat opposite him in her grave, composed widowhood, even the disguise of the black weeds could not take away a look that returned again and again, reminding the earl of the Helen of his childhood--the bright, sweet, wholesome-natured, high-spirited Helen Cardross.

"I asked you to come to me in the carriage," said he, after they had spoken a while about ordinary things. "Before we reach home, I think we ought to have a little talk upon some few matters which we have never referred to as yet. Are you able for this?"

"Oh yes, but--I can't--I can't!" and a sudden expression of trouble and fear darkened the widow's face. "Do not ask me any questions about the past. It is all over now; it seems like a dream-- as if I had never been away from Cairnforth."

"Let it be so then, Helen, my dear," replied the earl, tenderly.

"Indeed, I never meant otherwise. It is far the best."

Thus, both at the time and ever after, he laid, and compelled others to lay, the seal of silence upon those two sad years, the secrets of which were buried in Captain Bruce's quiet grave in Grayfriars' church-yard.

"Helen," he continued, "I am not going to ask you a single question; I am only going to tell you a few things, which you are to tell your father at the first opportunity, so as to place you in a right position toward him, and whatever his health may be, to relieve his mind entirely both as to you and Boy."

"Boy" the little Alexander had already begun to be called. "Boy" par excellence, for even at that early period of his existence he gave tokens of being a most masculine character, with a resolute will of his own, and a power of howling till he got his will which delighted Nurse Campbell exceedingly. He was already a thorough Cardross--not in the least a Bruce; he inherited Helen's great blue eyes, large frame, and healthy temperament, and was, in short, that repet.i.tion of the mother in the son which Dame Nature delights in, and out of which she sometimes makes the finest and n.o.blest men that the world ever sees.

"Boy has been wide awake these two hours, noticing every thing," said his mother, with a mother's firm conviction that this rather imaginative fact was the most interesting possible to every body. "He might have known the loch quite well already, by the way he kept staring at it."

"He will know it well enough by-and by," said the earl, smiling. "You are aware, Helen, that he and you are permanently coming home."

"To the Manse? yes! My dear father! he will keep us there during his life time. Afterward we must take our chance, my boy and I."

"Not quite that. Are you not aware--I thought, from circ.u.mstances, you must have guessed it long ago--that Cairnforth Castle, and my whole property, will be yours sometime?"

"I will tell you no untruth, Lord Cairnforth. I was aware of it. That is, he--I mean it was suspected that you had meant it once. I found this out--don't ask me how--shortly after I was married; and I determined, as the only chance of avoiding it--and several other things--never to write to you again; never to take the least means of bringing myself--us--back to your memory."

"Why so?"

"I wished you to forget us, and all connected with us, and to choose some one more worthy, more suitable, to inherit your property."

"But, Helen, that choice rested with myself alone," said the earl, smiling. "Has not a man the right to do what he likes with his own?"

"Yes, but--oh," cried Helen, earnestly, "do not talk of this. It caused me such misery once. Never let us speak of it again."

"I must speak of it," was the answer, equally earnest. "All my comfort --I will not say happiness; we have both learned, Helen, not to count too much upon happiness in this world--but all the peace of my future life, be it short or long, depends upon my having my heart's desire in this matter. It is my heart's desire, and no one shall forbid it. I will carry out my intentions, whether you agree to them or not. I will speak of them no more, if you do not wish it, but I shall certainly perform them. And I think it would be far better if we could talk matters out together, and arrange every thing plainly and openly before you go home to the Manse, if you prefer the Manse, though I could have wished it was to the Castle."

"To the Castle!"

"Yes. I intended to have brought you back from Edinburgh--all of you," added the earl, with emphasis, "to the Castle for life!"

Helen was much affected. She made no attempt either to resist or to reply.

"But now, my dear, you shall do exactly what you will about the home you choose--exactly what makes you most content, and your father also.

Only listen to me just for five minutes, without interrupting me. I never could bear to be interrupted, you know."

Helen faintly smiled, and Lord Cairnforth, in a brief, business-like way, explained how, the day after his coming of age, he had deliberately, and upon what he--and Mr. Menteith likewise-- considered just grounds, const.i.tuted her, Helen Cardross, as his sole heiress; that he had never altered his will since, and therefore she now was, and always would have been, and her children after her, rightful successors to the Castle and broad acres of Cairnforth.

"The t.i.tle lapses," he added: "there will be no more Earls of Cairnforth. But your boy may be the founder of a new name and family, that may live and rule for generations along the sh.o.r.es of our loch, and perhaps keep even my poor name alive there for a little while."

Helen did not speak. Probably she too, with her clear common sense, saw the wisdom of the thing. For as, as the earl said, he had a right to choose his own heir--and as even the world would say, what better heir could he choose than his next of kin--Captain Bruce's child?

What mother could resist such a prospect for her son? She sat, her tears flowing, but still with a great light in her blue eyes, as if she saw far away in the distance, far beyond all this sorrow and pain, the happy future of her darling--her only child.

"Of course, Helen, I could pa.s.s you over, and leave all direct to that young man of yours, who is, if I died intestate, my rightful heir. But I will not--at least, not yet. Perhaps, if I live to see him of age, I may think about making him take my name, as Bruce-Montgomerie. But meanwhile I shall educate him, send him to school and college, and at home he shall be put under Malcolm's care, and have ponies to ride and boats to row. In short, Helen," concluded the earl, looking earnestly in her face with that sad, fond, and yet peaceful expression he had, "I mean your boy to do all that I could not do, and to be all that I ought to have been. You are satisfied?"

"Yes--quite. I thank you. And I thank G.o.d."

A minute more, and the carriage stopped at the wicket-gate of the Manse garden.

There stood the minister, with his white locks bared, and his whole figure trembling with agitation, but still himself--stronger and better than he had been for many months.

"Papa! papa!" And Helen, his own Helen, was in his arms.

"Drive on," said Lord Cairnforth, hurriedly; "Malcolm, we will go straight to the Castle now."

And so, no one heeding him--they were too happy to notice any thing beyond themselves--the earl pa.s.sed on, with a strange smile, not of this world at all, upon his quiet face, and returned to his own stately and solitary home.

Chapter 14

Good Mrs. Campbell had guessed truly that from this time forward Helen Bruce would be only a mother. Either she was one of those women in whom the maternal element predominates--who seem born to take care of other people and rarely to be taken care of themselves--or else her cruel experience of married life had forever blighted in her all wifely emotions--even wifely regrets. She was grave, sad, silent, for many months during her early term of widowhood, but she made no pretense of extravagant sorrow, and, except under the rarest and most necessary circ.u.mstances, she never even named her husband. Nothing did she betray about him, or her personal relations with him, even to her nearest and dearest friends. He had pa.s.sed away, leaving no more enduring memory than the tomb-stone which Lord Cairnforth had erected in Grayfriars'

church-yard.

---Except his child, of whom it was the mother's undisguised delight that, outwardly and inwardly, the little fellow appeared to be wholly a Cardross. With his relatives on the father's side, after the one formal letter which she had requested should be written to Colonel Bruce announcing Captain Bruce's death, Helen evidently wished to keep up no acquaintance whatever--nay, more than wished; she was determined it should be so--with that quiet, resolute determination which was sometimes seen in every feature of her strong Scotch face, once so girlish, but it bore tokens of what she had gone through--of a battle from which no woman ever comes out unwounded or unscarred.

But, as before said, she was a mother, and wholly a mother, which blessed fact healed the young widow's heart better and sooner than any thing else could have done. Besides, in her case, there was no suspense, no conflict of duties--all her duties were done. Had they lasted after her child's birth the struggle might have been too hard; for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these conflict, as they do sometimes, G.o.d help her who has to choose between them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross of old, in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the minister's active and helpful daughter.

For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the present, be recognized at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward herself or her son she insisted on keeping wholly secret, except, of course, as regarded that dear and good father.

"I may die," she said to the earl--"die before yourself; and if my boy grows up, you may not love him, or he may not deserve your love, in which case you must choose another heir. No, you shall be bound in no way externally; let all go on as heretofore. I will have it so."

And of all Lord Cairnforth's generosity she would accept of nothing for herself except a small annual sum, which, with her widow's pension from the East India Company, sufficed to make her independent of her father; but she did not refuse kindness to her boy.

Never was there such a boy. "Boy" he was called from the first, never "baby;" there was nothing of the baby about him. Before he was a year old he ruled his mother, grandfather, and Uncle Duncan with a rod of iron. Nay, the whole village were his slaves. "Miss Helen's bairn" was a little king every where. It might have gone rather hard for the poor wee fellow thus allegorically

"Wearing on his baby brow the round And top of sovereignty"

That dangerous sovereignty--any human being--to wield, had there not been at least one person who was able to a.s.sume authority over him.