A Noble Life Part 7

"Yes," he said, at last, with a faint, sad smile, "I agree with old Duncan--I never mean to go to London any more. I shall stay for the rest of my days among my own people."

"So much the better for them," observed the minister, warmly.

"Do you think that? Well, we shall see. I must try and make it so, as well as I can. I am but where I was before, as Dr. Hamilton said. Poor Dr. Hamilton! He is so sorry."

Mr. Cardross did not ask about what, but turned to the table and began cutting open the leaves of a book. For Helen, she drew nearer to Lord Cairnforth's chair, and laid over the poor, weak, wasted fingers her soft, warm hand.

The tears sprang to the young earl's eyes. "Don't speak to me," he whispered; "it is all over now; but it was very hard for a time."

"I know it."

"Yes--at least as much as you can know."

Helen was silent. She recognized, as she had never recognized before, the awful individuality of suffering which it had pleased G.o.d to lay upon this one human being--suffering at which even the friends who loved him best could only stand aloof and gaze, without the possibility of alleviation.

"Ay," he said, at last, "it is all over: I need try no more experiments.

I shall just sit still and be content."

What was the minute history of the experiments he had tried, how much bodily pain they had cost him, and through how much mental pain he had struggled before he attained that "content," he did not explain even to Helen. He turned the conversation to the books which Mr. Cardross was cutting, and many other books, of which he had bought a whole cart-load for the minister's library. Neither then, nor at any other time, did he ever refer, except in the most cursory way, to his journey to London.

But Helen noticed that for a long while--weeks, nay, months, he seemed to avoid more than ever any conversation about himself. He was slightly irritable and uncertain of mood, and disposed to shut himself up in the Castle, reading, or seeming to read, from morning till night.

It was not till a pa.s.sing illness of the minister's in some degree forced him that he reappeared at the Manse, and fell into his old ways of coming and going, resuming his studies with Mr. Cardross, and his walks with Helen--or rather drives, for he had ceased to be carried in Malcolm's arms.

"I am a man, now, or ought to be," he said once, as a reason for this, after which no one made any remarks on the subject. Malcolm still retained his place as the earl's close attendant--as faithful as his shadow, almost as silent.

But the next year or so made a considerable alteration in Lord Cairnforth. Not in growth--the little figure never grew any bigger than that of a boy of ten or twelve; but the childish softness pa.s.sed from the face; it sharpened, and hardened, and became that of a young man. The features developed; and a short black beard, soft and curly, for it had never known the razor, added character to what, in ordinary men, would have been considered a very handsome face. It had none of the painful expression so often seen in deformed persons, but more resembled those sweet Italian heads of youthful saints--Saint Sebastian's, for instance--which the old masters were so fond of painting; and though there was a certain melancholy about it when in repose, during conversation it brightened up, and was the cheerfullest, most sunshiny face imaginable.

That is, it ultimately became so; but for a long time after the journey to London a shadow hung over it, which rarely quite pa.s.sed away except in Helen's company. n.o.body could be dreary for long beside Helen Cardross; and either through her companionship, or his own inherent strength of will, or both combined, the earl gradually recovered from the bitterness of lost hopes, whatsoever they had been, and became once more his own natural self, perhaps even more cheerful, since it was now not so much the gayety of a boy as the composed, equable serenity of a thoughtful man.

His education might be considered complete: it had advanced to the utmost limit to which Mr. Cardross could carry it; but the pupil insisted on retaining, nominally and pecuniarily, his position at the Manse.

Or else the two would spend hours--nay, days, shut up together in the Castle Library, the beautiful octagon room, with its painted ceiling, and its eight walls lined from floor to roof with empty shelves, to plan the filling of which was the delight of the minister's life, since, but for his poor parish and his large family, Mr. Cardross would have been a thorough bibliomaniac. Now, in a vicarious manner, the hobby of his youth reappeared, and at every cargo of books that arrived at the Castle his old eyes brightened--for he was growing to look really an old man now--and he would plunge among them with an ardor that sometimes made both the earl and Helen smile. But Helen's eyes were dim too, for she saw through all the tender cunning, and often watched Lord Cairnforth as he sat contentedly in his little chair, in the midst of a pile of books, examining, directing, and sympathizing, though doing nothing. Alas!

nothing could he do. But it was one of the secrets which made these three lives so peaceful, that each could throw itself out of itself into that of another, and take thence, secondarily, the sunshine that was denied to its own.

Beyond the family at the Manse the earl had no acquaintance whatsoever, and seemed to desire none. His rank lifted him above the small proprietors who lived within visitable distance of the Castle: they never attempted to a.s.sociate with him. Sometimes a stray caller appeared, prompted by curiosity, which Mrs. Campbell generally found ingenious reasons for leaving ungratified, and Lord Cairnforth's excessive shyness and dislike to appear before strangers did the rest.

It is astonishing how little the world cares to cultivate those out of whom it can get nothing; and the small establishment at Cairnforth Castle, with its almost invisible head, soon ceased to be an object of interest to any body--at least to any body in that sphere of life where the earl would otherwise have moved.

Among his own tenantry, the small farmers along the sh.o.r.es of the two lochs which bounded the peninsula, his long minority and mysterious affliction made him personally almost unknown. They used to come twice a year, at WhitSunday and Martinmas, to pay their rents to Mr. Menteith; to inquire for my lord's health, and to drink in abundance of whisky; but the earl himself they never saw, and their feelings toward him were a mixture of reverence and awe.

It was different with the earl's immediate neighbors, the humble inhabitants of the clachan. These, during the last nine years, had gradually grown familiar, first with the little childish form, carried about tenderly in Malcolm's arms, and then with the m.u.f.fled figure, scarcely less of a child to look at, which Malcolm, and sometimes Miss Cardross, drove about in a pony-chaise. At the kirk especially, though he was always carefully conveyed in first, and borne out last of all the congregation, his face--his sweet, kind, beautiful face was known to them all, and the children were always taught to doff their bonnets or pull their forelocks to the earl.

Beyond that, n.o.body knew any thing about him. His large property, acc.u.mulating every year, was entirely under the management of Mr.

Menteith; he himself took no interest in it; and the way by which the former heirs of Cairnforth had used to make themselves popular from boyhood, by going among the tenantry, hunting, shooting, fishing, and boating, was impossible to this earl. His distant dependents hardly remembered his existence, and he took no heed of theirs, until a few months before he came of age, when one of these slight chances which often determine so much changed the current of affairs.

If was just before the "term." Mr. Menteith had been expected all day, but had not arrived, and the earl had taken a long drive with Helen and her father through the Cairnforth woods, where the wild daffodils were beginning to succeed the fading snowdrops, and the mavises had been heard to sing those few rich notes which belong especially to the twilights of early spring, and earnest of all the richness, and glory, and delight of the year. The little party seemed to feel it--that soft, dreamy sense of dawning spring, which stirs all the soul, especially in youth, with a vague looking forward to some pleasantness which never comes. They sat, silent and talking by turns, beside the not unwelcome fire, in a corner of the large library.

"We shall miss Alick a good deal this spring," said Helen, recurring to a subject of which the family heart was full, the departure of the eldest son to "begin the world" in Mr. Menteith's office in Edinburg.

He was not a very clever lad, but he was sensible and steady, and blessed with that practical mother-wit which is often better than brains. The minister, though he had been bemoaning his boy's "little Latin and less Greek," and comparing Alick's learning very disadvantageously with that of the earl, to whom Mr. Cardross confided all his troubles, nevertheless seemed both proud and hopeful of his eldest son, the heir to his honest name, which Alick would now carry out into a far wider world than that of the poor minister of Cairnforth, and doubtless, in good time, transmit honorably to a third generation.

"Yes," added the father, when innumerable castles in the air had been built and rebuilt for Alick's future, "I'll not deny that my lad is a good lad. He is the hope of the house, and he knows it. It's little of worldly gear that he'll get for many a day, and he tells me he will have to work from morning till night; but he rather enjoys the prospect than not."

"No wonder. Work must be a happy thing," said, with a sigh, the young Earl of Cairnforth.

Helen's heart smote her for having let the conversation drift into this direction, as it did occasionally when, from their long familiarity with him, they forgot how he must feel about many things, natural enough to them, but to him, unto whom the outer world, with all its duties, energies, enjoyments, could never be any thing but a name, full of sharpest pain. She said, after a few minutes watching of the grave, still face--not exactly sad, but only very still, very grave--

"Just look at papa, how happy he is among those books you sent for!

Your plan of his arranging the library is the delight of his life."

"Is it? I am so glad," said the earl, brightening up at once. 'What a good thing I thought of it!"

"You always do think of every thing that is good and kind," said Helen, softly.

"Thank you," and the shadow pa.s.sed away, as any trifling pleasure always had power to make it pa.s.s. Sometimes Helen speculated vaguely on what a grand sort of man the earl would have been had he been like other people --how cheerful, how active, how energetic and wise. But then one never knows how far circ.u.mstances create and unfold character. We often learn as much by what is withheld as by what is enjoyed.

"Helen," he said, moving his chair a little nearer her--he had brought one good thing from London, a self-acting chair, in which he could wheel himself about easily, and liked doing it--"I wonder whether your father would have taken as much pleasure in his books thirty years ago. Do you think one could fill up one's whole life with reading and study?"

"I can not say; I'm not clever myself, you know."

"Oh, but you are--with a sort of practical cleverness. And so is Alick, in his own way. How happy Alick must be, going out into the world, with plenty to do all day long! How bright he looked this morning!"

"He sees only the sunny side of things, he is still no more than a boy."

"Not exactly; he is a year older than I am."

Helen hardly knew what to reply. She guessed so well the current of the earl's thoughts, which were often her own too, as she watched his absent or weary looks, though he tried hard to keep his attention to what Mr.

Cardross was reading or discussing. But the distance between twenty and sixty--the life beginning and the life advancing toward its close-- was frequently apparent; also between an active, original mind, requiring humanity for its study, and one whose whole bent was among the dry bones of ancient learning--the difference, in short, between learning and knowledge--the mere student and the man who only uses study as a means to the perfecting of his whole nature, his complete existence as a human being.

All this Helen felt with her quick, feminine instinct, but she did not clearly understand it, and she could not reason about it at all. She only answered in a troubled sort of way that she thought every body, somehow or other, might in time find enough to do--to be happy in doing--and she was trying to put her meaning into more connected and intelligible form, when, greatly to her relief, Malcom entered the library.

Malcolm, being so necessary and close a personal attendant on the earl, always came and went about his master without any body's noticing him; but now Helen fancied he was making signals to her or to some one. Lord Cairnforth detected them.

"Is any thing wrong, Malcolm? Speak out; don't hide things from me. I am not a child now."

There was just the slightest touch of sharpness in the gentle voice, and Malcolm did speak out.

"I wadna be troubling ye, my lord, but it's just an auld man, Dougal Mc Dougal, frae the head o' Loch Mhor--a puir doited body, wha says he maun hae a bit word wi' your lordship. But I tellt him ye coulna be fashed wi' the like o' him."

"That was not civil or right, Malcolm--an old man, too. Where is he?"

"Just by the door--eh--and he's coming ben--the ill-mannered loon!" cried Malcolm, angrily, as he interrupted the intruder--a tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a shepherd's plaid, with the bonnet set upon the grizzled head in that st.u.r.dy independence--nay, more than independence--rudeness, rough and th.o.r.n.y as his own thistle, which is the characteristic of the Scotch peasant externally, till you get below the surface to the warm, kindly heart.

"I'm no ill-mannered, and I'll just gang through the hale house till I find my lord," said the old man, shaking off Malcolm with a strength that his seventy odd years seemed scarcely to have diminished. "I'm wushing ane harm to ony o' ye, but I maun get speech o' my lord. He's no bairn; he'll be ane-and-twenty the thirtieth o' June: I mind the day weel, for the wife was brought to bed o' her last wean the same day as the countess, and our Dougal's a braw callant the noo, ye ken. Gin the earl has ony wits ava, whilk folk thocht was aye doubtful', he'll hae gotten them by this time. I maun speak wi' himself', unless, as they said, he's no a' there."

"Haud your tongue, ye fule!" cried Malcolm, stopping him with a fierce whisper. "Yon's my lord!"

The old shepherd started back, for at this moment a sudden blaze-up of the fire showed him, sitting in the corner, the diminutive figure, attired carefully after the then fashion of gentlemen's dress, every thing rich and complete, even to the black silk stockings and shoes on the small, useless feet, and the white ruffles half hiding the twisted wrists and deformed hands.

"Yes, I am the Earl of Cairnforth. What did you want to say to me?"