A Noble Life Part 21

This was, strange to say--and yet not strange--the Earl of Cairnforth.

From his earliest babyhood Boy had been accustomed to the sight of the sight of the motionless figure in the moving chair, who never touched him, but always spoke so kindly and looked around so smilingly; whom, he could perceive--for children are quicker to notice things than we some times think--his mother and grandfather invariably welcomed with such exceeding pleasure, and treated with never-failing respect and tenderness. And, as soon as he could crawl, the footboard of the mysterious wheeled chair became to the little man a perfect treasure-house of delight. Hidden there he found toys, picture-books, "sweeties"--such as he got nowhere else, and for which, before appropriating them, he was carefully taught to express thanks in his own infantile way, and made to understand fully from whom they came.

"It's bribery, and against my principles," the earl would say, half sadly. "But, if I did not give him things, how else could Boy learn to love me?"

Helen never answered this, no more than she used answer many similar speeches in the earl's childhood. She knew time would prove them all to be wrong.

What sort of idea the child really had of this wonderful donor, the source of most of his pleasures, who yet was so different externally from every body else; who never moved from the wheel-chair; who neither caressed him nor played with him, and whom he was not allowed to play with, but only lifted up sometimes to kiss softly the kind face which always smiled down upon him with a sort of "superior love"--what the child's childish notion of his friend was no one could of course discover. But it must have been a mingling of awe and affectionateness; for he would often--even before he could walk--crawl up to the little chair, steady himself by it, and then look into Lord Cairnforth's face with those mysterious baby eyes, full of questioning, but yet without the slightest fear. And once, when his mother was teaching him his first hymn--

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child,"

Boy startled her by the sudden remark--one of the divine profanities that are often falling from the innocent lips of little children--

"I know Jesus. He is the earl."

And then Helen tried, in some simple way, to make the child understand about Lord Cairnforth, and how he had been all his life so heavily afflicted; but Boy could not comprehend it as affliction at all. There seemed to him something not inferior, but superior to all other people in that motionless figure, with its calm sweet face--who was never troubled, never displeased--whom every body delighted to obey, and at whose feet lay treasures untold.

"I think Boy likes me," Lord Cairnforth would say, when he met the upturned beaming face as the child, in an ecstasy of expectation, ran to meet him. "His love may last as long as the playthings do."

But the earl was mistaken, as Helen knew. His love-victory had been in something deeper than toys and "goodies." Even when their charm began to cease Boy still crept up to the little chair, and looked from the empty footboard up to the loving face, which no one, man, woman, or child, ever regarded without something far higher than pity.

And, by degrees, Boy, or "Carr"--which, as being the diminutive for his second Christian name, Cardross, he was often called now--found a new attraction in his friend. He would listen with wide-open eyes, and attention that never flagged, to the interminable "tories" which the earl told him, out of the same brilliant imagination which had once used to delight his uncles in the boat. And so, little by little, the child and the man grew to be "a pair of friends"--familiar and fond, but with a certain tender reverence always between them, which had the most salutary effect on the younger.

Whenever he was sick, or sorry, or naughty--and Master "Boy" could be exceedingly naughty sometimes--the voice which had most influence over him, the influence to which he always succ.u.mbed, came from the little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there--no dark looks or sharp tones--but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm will which never pa.s.sed over a single fault, or yielded to a single whim. In his wildest pa.s.sions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case was weakened by occasional over-indulgence and by an almost morbid terror of the results of the same, failed to conquer the child, Helen used, as a last resource, to bring him in her arms, set him down beside Lord Cairnforth, and leave him there. She never came back but she found Boy "good".

"He makes me good, too, I think," the earl would say now and then, "for he makes me happy."

It was true. Lord Cairnforth never looked otherwise than happy when he had beside him that little blossom of hope of the new generation-- Helen's child.

As years went by, though he still lived alone at the Castle, it was by no means the secluded life of his youth and early manhood. He gradually gathered about him neighbors and friends. He filled his house occasionally with guests, of his own rank and of all ranks; people notable and worthy to be known. He became a "patron," as they called it in those days, of art and literature, and a.s.sembled around him all who, for his pleasure and their own benefit, chose to enjoy his hospitality.

In a quiet way, for he disliked public show, he was likewise what was termed a "philanthropist," but always on the system which he had learned in his boyhood from Helen and Mr. Cardross, that "charity begins at home;" with the father who guides well his own household; the minister whose footstep is welcomed at every door in his own parish; the proprietor whose just, wise, and merciful rule make him sovereign absolute in his own estate. This last especially was the character given along all the country-side to the Earl of Cairnforth.

His was not a sad existence; far from it. None who knew him, and certainly none who ever staid long with him in his own home, went away with that impression. He enjoyed what he called "a sunshiny life"-- having sunshiny faces about him; people who knew how to accept the sweet and endure the bitter; to see the heavenly side even of sorrow; to do good to all, and receive good from all; avoiding all envies, jealousies, angers, and strifes, and following out literally the apostolic command, "As much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men."

And so the earl was, in the best sense of the word, popular. Every body liked him, and he liked every body. But deep in his heart--ay, deeper than any of these his friends and acquaintance ever dreamed-- steadying and strengthening it, keeping it warm for all human uses, yet calm with the quiet sadness of an eternal want, lay all those emotions which are not likings, but loves; not sympathies, but pa.s.sions; but which with him were to be, in this world, forever dormant and unfulfilled.

Never, let the Castle be ever so full of visitors, or let his daily cares, his outward interest, and his innumerable private charities be ever so great, did he omit driving over twice or thrice a week to spend an hour or two at the Manse--in winter, by the study fire; in summer, under the shade of the green elm-trees--the same trees where he had pa.s.sed that first sunny Sunday when he came a poor, lonely, crippled orphan child into the midst of the large, merry family--all scattered now.

The minister, Helen, and Boy were the sole inmates left at the Manse, and of these three the latter certainly was the most important. Hide it as she would, the princ.i.p.al object of the mother's life was her only child. Many a time, as Lord Cairnforth sat talking with her, after his old fashion, of all his interests, schemes, labors, and hopes--hopes solely for others, and labors, the end of which he knew he would never see--he would smile to himself, noticing how Helen's eye wandered all the while--wandered to where that rosy young scapegrace rode his tiny pony--the earl's gift--up and down the gravel walks, or played at romps with Malcolm, or dug holes in the flower-beds, or got into all and sundry of the countless disgraces which were forever befalling Boy; yet which, so lovable was the little fellow, were as continually forgiven, and, behind his back, even exalted into something very like merits.

But once--and it was an incident which, whether or not Mrs. Bruce forgot it herself, her friend never did, since it furnished a key to much of the past, and a serious outlook for the future--Boy committed an error which threw his mother into an agony of agitation such as she had not betrayed since she came back, a widow, to Cairnforth.

Her little son told a lie! It was a very small lie, such as dozens of children tell--are punished and pardoned--but a lie it was. It happened on August morning, when the raspberries for which the Manse was famous. He was desired not to touch them--"not to lay a finger on them," insisted the mother. And he promised. But, alas! The promises of four years old are not absolutely reliable; and so that which happened once in a more ancient garden happened in the garden of the Manse. Boy plucked and ate. He came back to his mother with his white pinafore all marked and his red mouth redder still with condemnatory stains. Yet, when asked "if he had touched the raspberries," he opened that wicked mouth and said, unblushingly, "No!"

Of course it was an untruth--self-evident; in its very simplicity almost amusing; but the earl was not prepared for the effect it seemed to have upon Helen. She started back, her lips actually blanched and her eyes glowing.

"My son has told a lie!" she cried, and kept repeating it over and over again. "My son has looked me in the face and told me a lie--his first lie!"

"Hush, Helen!" for her manner seemed actually to frighten the child.

"No, I can not pa.s.s it over! I dare not! He must be punished. Come!"

She seized Boy by the hand, looking another way, and was moving off with him, as if she hardly knew what she was doing.

"Helen!" called the earl, almost reproachfully; for, in his opinion, out of all comparison with the offense seemed the bitterness with which the mother felt it, and was about to punish it. "Tell me, first, what are you going to do with the child?"

"I hardly know--I must think--must pray. What if my son, my only son, should inherit--I mean, if he should grow up a liar?"

That word "inherit" betrayed her. No wonder now at the mother's agony of fear--she who was mother to Captain Bruce's son. Lord Cairnforth guessed it all.

"I understand," said he. "But--"

"No," Helen interrupted, "you need understand nothing, for I have told you nothing. Only I must kill the sin--the fatal sin--at the very root. I must punish him. Come, child!"

"Come back, Helen," said the earl; and something in the tone made her obey at once, as occasionally during her life Helen had been glad to obey him, and creep under the shelter of a stronger will and clearer judgment than her own. "You are altogether mistaken, my dear friend.

Your boy is only a child, and errs as such, and you treat him as if he had sinned like a grown-up man. Be reasonable. We will both take care of him. No fear that he will turn out a liar!"

Helen hesitated; but still her looks were so angry and stern, all the mother vanished out of them, that the boy, instead of clinging to her, ran away crying, and hid himself behind Lord Cairnforth's chair.

"Leave him to me, Helen. Can not you trust me--me--with your son!"

Mrs. Bruce paused.

"Now," said the earl, wheeling himself round a little, so that he came face to face with the sobbing child, "lift up your head, Boy, and speak the truth like a man to me and to your mother--see! She is listening.

Did you touch those raspberries?"

"No!"

"Cardross!" Calling him by his rarely-spoken name, not his pet-name, and fixing upon him eyes, not angry, but clear and searching, that compelled the truth even from a child, "think again. You must tell us!"

"No, me didn't touch them," answered Boy, dropping his head in conscious shame. "Not with me fingers. Me just opened me mouth and they popped in."

Lord Cairnforth could hardly help smiling at the poor little sinner-- the infant Jesuit attaining his object by such an ingenious device; but the mother didn't smile, and her look was harder than ever.

"You hear! If not a lie, it was a prevarication. He who lies is a scoundrel, but he who prevaricates is a scoundrel and coward too.

Sooner than Boy should grow up like--like that, I would rather die.

No, I would rather see him die; for I might come in time to hate my own son."

By these fierce words, and by the gleaming eyes, which made a sudden and total change in the subdued manner, and the plain, almost elderly face under the widow's cap that Helen always wore, Lord Cairnforth guessed, more than he had ever guessed before, of what the sufferings of her married life had been.

"My friend," he said, and there was infinite pity as well as tenderness in his voice, "believe me, you are wrong. You are foreboding what, please G.o.d, will never happen. G.o.d does not deal with us in that manner. He bids us do His will, each of us individually, without reference to the doings or misdoings of any other person. And if we obey Him, I believe He takes care we shall not suffer--at least not forever, even in this world. Do not be afraid. Boy," calling the little fellow, who was now sobbing in bitterest contrition behind the wheeled chair, "come and kiss your mother. Promise her that you will never again vex her by telling a lie."

"No, no, no. Me'll not vex mamma. Good mamma! Pretty mamma! Boy so sorry!"

And he clung closely and pa.s.sionately to his mother, kissing her averted face twenty times over.

"You see, Helen, you need not fear," said the earl.