When his friends had departed, Lord Cairnforth sat silent and melancholy. His cousin good-naturedly tried to rouse him into the usual contest at chess with which they had begun to while away the long winter evenings, and which just suited Lord Cairnforth's acute, accurate, and introspective brain, accustomed to plan and to order, so that he delighted in the game, and was soon as good a player as his teacher. But now his mind was disturbed and restless; he sat by the fireside, listening to the fierce wind that went howling round and round the Castle, as the wind can howl along the sometimes placid shores of Loch Beg.

"I hope they have reached the Manse in safety. Let me know, Malcolm, when the carriage returns. I will go to bed then. I wish they would have remained here; but the minister never will stay; he dislikes sleeping a single night from under his own roof. Is he not a good man, cousin—one of a thousand?"

"I have not the slightest doubt of it."

"And his daughter—have you in any way modified your opinion of her, which at first was not very favorable?"

"Not as to her beauty, certainly," was the careless reply. "She's 'no bonnie,' as you say in these parts—terribly Scotch; but she is very good. Only don't you think good people are just a little wearisome sometimes?"

The earl smiled. He was accustomed to, and often rather amused by his cousin's honest worldliness and outspoken skepticisms—that candid confession of badness which always inclines a kindly heart to believe the very best of the penitent.

"Nevertheless, though Miss Cardross may be 'no bonnie,' and too good to please your taste, I hope you will go often to the Manse in my absence, and write me word how they are, otherwise I shall hear little—the minister's letters are too voluminous to be frequent—and Miss Cardross is not given to much correspondence."

Captain Bruce promised, and again the two young men sat silent, listening to the eerie howling of the wind. It inclined both of them to graver talk than was their habit when together.

"I wonder," said the earl, "whether this blast, according to popular superstition, is come to carry many souls away with it 'on the wings of the wind!' Where will they fly to the instant they leave the body? How free and happy they must feel!"

"What an odd fancy! And not a particularly pleasant one," replied the captain, with a shiver.

"Not unpleasant, to my mind. I like to think of these things. If I were out of the body, I should, if I could fly back to Cairnforth."

"Pray don't imagine such dreadful things. May you live a hundred years!"

"Not quite, I hope. A hundred years—of my life! No. the most loving friend I have would not wish it for me." Then, suddenly, as with an impulse created by the sad events of the day—the stormy night— and the disturbed state of his own mental condition, inclining him to any sort of companionship, "Cousin, I am going to trust you, specially, in a matter of business which I wish named to the Cardrosses. I should have done so before they left to-night. May I confide to you the message?"

"Willingly. What is it about?" and the captain's keen black eyes assumed an expression which, if the earl had noticed, he might have repented of his trust. But no, he never would have noticed it. His upright, honest nature, though capable of great reserve, was utterly incapable of false pretense, deceit, or self-interested diplomacy. And what was impossible in himself he never suspected in other people. He thought his cousin shallow sometimes, but good-natured; a little worldly, perhaps, but always well-meaning. That Captain Bruce could have come to Cairnforth for any other purpose than mere curiosity, and remained there for any motive except idleness and the pursuit of health, did not occur to Lord Cairnforth.

"It is on the subject that you so much dislike my talking about—my own death; a probability which I have to consider, as being rather nearer to me than it is to most people. Should I die, will you remember that my will lies at the office of Menteith and Ross, Edinburg?"

"So you have made your will?" said the captain, rather eagerly; then added, "What a courageous man you are! I never durst make mine. But then, to be sure, I have nothing to leave—except my sword, which I hereby make over to you, well-beloved cousin."

"Thank you, though I should have very little use it. And that reminds me to explain something. The day I made my will was, by an odd chance, the day you arrived here. Had I know you then, I should have named you in it, leaving you—I may as well tell you the sum—a thousand pounds, in token of cousinly regard."

"You are exceedingly kind, but I am no fortune-hunter."

"I know that. Still, the legacy may not be useless. I shall make it legally secure as soon as I get to Edinburg. In any case you are quite safe, for I have mentioned you to my heir."

"Your heir! Who do you mean?" interrupted Captain Bruce, thrown off his guard by excessive surprise.

The earl said, with a little dignity of manner, "It is scarcely needful to answer your question. The title, you are aware, will be extinct; I meant the successor to my landed property."

"Do I know the gentleman?"

"I named no gentleman."

"Not surely a lady? Not—" a light suddenly breaking in upon him, so startling that it overthrew all his self-control, and even his good breeding. "It can not possibly be Miss Helen Cardross?"

"Captain Bruce," said the earl, the angry color flashing all over his pale face, "I was simply communicating a message to you; there was no need for any farther questioning."

"I beg your pardon, Lord Cairnforth," returned the other, perceiving how great a mistake he had made. "I have no right whatever to question, or even to speculate concerning your heir, who is doubtless the fittest person you could have selected."

"Most certainly," replied the earl, in a manner which put a final stop to the conversation.

It was not resumed on any other topics; and shortly afterward, Malcolm having come in with the announcement that the carriage had returned from the Manse (at which Captain Bruce's sharp eyes were bent scrutinizing on the earl's face, but learned nothing thence), the cousins separated.

The captain had faithfully promised to be up at dawn to see the travelers off, but an apology came from him to the effect that the morning air was too damp for his lungs, and that he had spent a sleepless night owning to his cough.

"An' nae wonder," remarked Malcolm, cynically, as he delivered the message, "for I heard him a' through the wee hours walkin' and walkin' up and doun, for a' the world like a wolf in a cage. And eh, but he's dour the day!"

"A sickly man finds it difficult not to be dour at times," said the Earl of Cairnforth.



Chapter 10

The earl reached Edinburg in the beginning of winter, and in those days an Edinburg winter was a very gay season. That brilliant society, which has now become a matter of tradition, was then in its zenith. Those renowned support-parties, where great wits, learned philosophers, and clever and beautiful women met together, a most enjoyable company, were going on almost every night, and drawing into their various small circles every thing that was most attractive in the larger circle outside.

Lord Cairnforth was a long time before he suffered himself to be drawn in likewise; but the business which detained him in Edinburg grew more and more tedious; he found difficulties arise on every hand, and yet he was determined not to leave until he had done all he wanted to do. Not only in money, but by personal influence, which, now that he tried to use it, he found was considerable, he furthered, in many ways, the interests of Mr. Menteith's sons. The widow, too, a gentle, helpless woman, soon discovered where to come to, on all occasions, for counsel and aid. Never had the earl led such a busy life—one more active, as far as his capabilities allowed.

Still, now and then time hung on his hands, and he felt a great lack of companionship, until, by degrees, his name and a good deal of his history got noised abroad, and he was perfectly inundated with acquaintances. Of course, he had it at his own option how much or how little he went out into the world. Every advantage that rank or fortune could give was his already; but he had another possession still—his own as much here as in the solitudes of Cairnforth, the art of making himself "weel likit." The mob of "good society," which is not better than any other mob, will run after money, position, talent, beauty, for a time; but it requires a quality higher and deeper than these, and distinct from them all, to produce lasting popularity.

This the earl had. In spite of his infirmities, he possessed the rare power of winning love, of making people love him for his own sake. At first, of course, his society was sought from mere curiosity, or even through meaner motives; but gradually, like the good clergyman with whom

"Fools who came to scoff remained to pray,"

Those who visited him to stare at, or pity a fellow-creature so afflicted, remained, attached by his gentleness, his patience, his wonderful unselfishness. And some few, of noble mind, saw in him the grandest and most religious spectacle that men can look upon—a human soul which has not suffered itself to be conquered by adversity.

Very soon the earl gathered round him, besides acquaintances, a knot of real friends, affectionate and true, who, in the charm of his cultivated mind, and the simplicity of his good heart, found ample amends for every thing that nature had denied him, the loss of which he bore so cheerfully and uncomplainingly.

By-and-by, induced by these, the excellent people whom, as by mesmeric attraction, goodness soon draws to itself, he began to go out a little into society. It could be done, with some personal difficulty and pain, and some slight trouble to his friends, which last was for a long time his chief objection; for a merciful familiarity with his own affliction had been brought about by time, and by the fact that he had never known any other sort of existence, and only, as a blind person guesses at colors, could speculate upon how it must feel to move about freely, to walk and run. He had also lost much of his early shyness, and ceased to feel any actual dread of being looked at. His chief difficulty was the practical one of locomotion, and this for him was solved much easier than if he had been a man of limited means. By some expenditure of money, and by a good deal of ingenious contrivance, he managed to be taken about as easily in Edinburg as at Cairnforth; was present at church and law-court, theatre and concert-room, and at many a pleasant reunion of pleasant people every where.

For in his heart Lord Cairnforth rather liked society. To him, whose external resources were so limited, who could in truth do nothing for his own amusement but read, social enjoyments were very valuable. He took pleasure in watching the encounter of keen wits, the talk of clever conversationalists. His own talent in that line was not small, though he seldom used it in large circles; but with two or three only about him, the treasures of his well-stored mind came out often very brilliantly. Then he was so alive to all that was passing in the world outside, and took as keen an interest in politics, social ethics, and schemes of philanthropy as if he himself had been like other men, instead of being condemned (or exalted—which shall we say? Dis aliter visum!) to a destiny of such solemn and awful isolation.

Yet he never put forward his affliction so as to make it painful to those around him. Many, in the generation now nearly passed away, long and tenderly remembered the little figure, placed motionless in the centre of a brilliant circle—all clever men and charming women— yet of whose notice the cleverest and most charming were always proud. Not because he was an earl—nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg then—but because he was himself. It was a pleasure just to sit beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter, or affectionate earnestness.

For every body loved him. Women, of course, did; they could not help it; but men were drawn to him likewise, with the sort of reverential tenderness that they would feel toward a suffering child or woman— and something more—intense respect. His high sense of honor, his true manliness, attracted the best of all the notabilities then constituting that brilliant set; and there was not one of them worth having for a friend at all who was not, in greater or less degree, the friend of the Earl of Cairnforth.

But there was another side of his Edinburg life which did not appear till long after he had quitted Modern Athens forever—nor even then fully; not until he had passed quite away from the comments of this mortal world. Then, many a struggling author, or worn-out professional man, to whom life was all up-hill, or to whom sudden misfortune had made the handful of "siller" (i.e. "silver") a matter of absolute salvation to both body and soul—scores of such as these afterward recalled hours or half hours spent in the cozy study in Charlotte Square, beside the little figure in its chair—outwardly capable of so little, yet endowed with both the power and will to do so much. Doing it so generously, too, and withal so delicately, that the most sensitive went away with their pride unwounded, and the most hardened and irreligious were softened by it into thankfulness to One higher than their earthly benefactor, who was only the medium through whom the blessings came.

These were accidental offices, intermingled with the principal duty which the earl had undertaken, and which he carried out with unremitting diligence—the care of his old friend's children. He placed some at school, and others at college; those who were already afloat in the world he aided with money and influence—an earl's name was so very influential, as, with an amused smile, he occasionally discovered.

But, busy as his new life was, he never forgot his old life and his old friends. He turned a deaf ear to all persuasions to take up his permanent abode, according as his rank and fortune warranted, in Edinburg. He was not unhappy there—he had plenty to do and to enjoy; but his heart was in quiet Cairnforth. Several times, troublesome, and even painful as the act of penmanship was to him, he sent a few lines to the Manse. But it happened to be a very severe winter, which made postal communication difficult. Besides, in those days people neither wrote nor expected letters very often. During the three months that Lord Cairnforth remained in Edinburg he only received two epistles from Mr. Cardross, and those were in prolix and Johnsonian style, on literary topics, and concerning the great and learned, with whom the poor learned country minister had all his life longed to mix, and had never been able.

Helen, who had scarcely penned a dozen letters in her life, wrote to him once only, in reply to one of his, telling him she was doing every thing as she thought he would best like; that Captain Bruce had assisted her and her father in many ways, so far as his health allowed, but he was very delicate still, and talked of going abroad, to the south of France probably, as soon as possible. The captain himself never wrote one single line.

At first the earl was a little surprised at this: however, it was not his habit easily to take offense at his friends. He was quite without that morbid self-esteem which is always imagining affronts or injuries. If people liked him, he was glad; if they showed it, he believed them, and rested in their affection with the simple faith of a child. But if they seemed to neglect him, he still was ready to conclude the slight was accidental, and he rarely grieved over it. Mere acquaintances had not the power to touch his heart. And this gentle heart which, liking many, loved but few, none whom he loved ever could really offend. He

"Grappled them to his soul with hooks of steel,"

And believed in them to the last extremity of faith that was possible.

So, whether Captain Bruce came under the latter category or the former, his conduct was passed over, waiting for future explanation when Lord Cairnforth returned home, as now, every day, he was wearying to do.

"But I will be back again in pleasant Edinburg next winter," said he to one of his new friends, who had helped to make his stay pleasant, and was sorely regretting his departure. "And I shall bring with me some very old friends of mine, who will enjoy it as much as I shall myself."

And he planned, and even made preliminary arrangements for a house to be taken, and an establishment formed, where the minister, Helen, and, indeed, all the Cardross family, if they chose, might find a hospitable home for the ensuing winter season.

"And how they will like it!" said he, in talking it over with Malcolm one day. "How the minister will bury himself in old libraries, and Miss Cardross will admire the grand shops and the beautiful views. And how the boys will go skating on Dunsappi Loch, and golfing over Bruntsfield Links. Oh, we'll make them all so happy!" added he, with pleasure shining in those contented eyes, which drew half their light from the joy that they saw, and caused to shine in the eyes around him.

It was after many days of fatiguing travel that Lord Cairnforth reached the ferry opposite Cairnforth.

There the Castle stood, just as he had left it, its white front gleaming against the black woods, then yellow and brown with autumn, but now only black, or with a faint amber shadow running through them, preparatory to the green of spring. Between lay the beautiful loch, looking ten times more beautiful than ever to eyes which had not seen it for many long months. How it danced and dimpled, as it had done before the squall in which the earl's father was drowned, and as it would do many a time again, after the fashion of these lovely, deceitful lochs, and of many other things in this world.

"Oh, Malcolm, it's good to be at home!" said the earl, as he gazed fondly at his white castle walls, at the ivy-covered kirk, and the gable end of the Manse. He had been happy in Edinburg, but it was far sweeter to come to the dear old friends that loved him. He seemed as if he had never before felt how dear they were, and how indispensable to his happiness.

"You are quite sure, Malcolm, that nobody knows we are coming? I wished to go down at once to the Manse, and surprise them all."

'Ye'll easy do that, my lord, for there's naebody in sight but Sandy the ferryman, wha little kens it's the earl himsel he's kepit waiting sae lang."

"And how's a' wi' ye, Sandy?" said Lord Cairnforth, cheerily, when the old man was rowing him across. "All well at home—at the Castle, the Manse, and the clachan"?

"Ou ay, my lord. Except maybe the minister. He's no weel. He's missing Miss Helen sair."

"Missing Miss Helen!" echoed the earl, turning pale.

"Ay, my lord. She gaed awa—it's just twa days sin syne. She was sair vexed to leave Cairnforth and the minister."

"Leave her father?"

"A man maun leave father and mither, and cleave unto his wife—the scripture says it. And a woman maun just do the like for her man, ye ken. Miss Helen's awa to France, or some sic place, wi' her husband, Captain Bruce."

The earl was sitting in the stern of the ferry-boat alone, no one being near him but Sandy, and Malcolm, who had taken the second oar. To old Sandy's communication he replied not a word—asked not a single question more—and was lifted out at the end of the five-minutes' passage just as usual. But the two men, though they also said nothing, remembered the expression of his face to their dying day.

"Take me home, Malcolm; I will go to the Manse another time. Carry me in your arms—the quickest way."

Malcolm lifted his master, and carried him, just as in the days when the earl was a child, through the pleasant woods of Cairnforth, up to the Castle door.

Nobody had expected them, and there was nothing ready.

"It's no matter—no matter," feebly said the earl, and allowed himself to be placed in an arm-chair by the fire in the housekeeper's room. There he sat passive.

"Will I bring the minister?" whispered Malcolm, respectfully. "Maybe ye wad like to see him, my lord."

"No, no."

"His lordship's no weel please," said the housekeeper to Mrs. Campbell, when the earl leant his head back, and seemed to be sleeping. "Is it about the captain's marriage: Did he no ken?"

"Ne'er a word o't"

"That was great lack o'respect on the part o' Captain Bruce, and he sic a pleasant young man; and Helen, too. Miss Helen tauld me her ain sel that the earl was greatly set upon her marriage, for the captain gaed to Edinburg just to tell him o't. And he wrote her word that his lordship wished him no to bide a single day, but to marry Miss Helen and tak her awa'. She'd never hae done it, in my opinion, but for that. For the captain was at her ilka day an a' day lang, looking like a ghaist, and telling' her he couldna live without her—she's a tender heart, Miss Helen—and she was sae awfu' vexed for him, ye ken. For, sure, Malcolm, the captain did seem almost like deein'."

"Deein'!" cried Malcolm, contemptuously, and then stopped. For while they were talking the earl's eyes had open wide, and fixed with a strange, sad, terrified look upon vacancy.

He remembered it all now—the last night he had spent at Cairnforth with his cousin—the conversation which passed between them—the questions asked, which, from his not answering, might have enabled the captain to guess at the probable disposal of his property. He could come to no other conclusion than that Captain Bruce had married Helen with the same motive which must have induced his appearance at the castle, and his eager and successful efforts to ingratiate himself there —namely, money; that the fortune which he had himself missed might accrue to him through his union with Lord Cairnforth's heiress.

How had he possibly accomplished this? How had he succeeded in making good, innocent, simple Helen love him? For that she would never have married without love the earl well knew. By what persuasions, entreaties, or lies—the housekeeper's story involved some evident lies—he had attained his end, remained, and must ever remain, among the mysteries of the many mysterious marriages which take place every day.

And it was all over. She was married, and gone away. Doubtless the captain had taken his precautions to prevent any possible hinderance. That it was a safe marriage legally, even though so little was known of the bridegroom's antecedent life, seemed more than probable—certain, seeing that the chief object he would have in this marriage was its legality, to assure himself thereby of the property which should fall to Helen in the event of the earl's decease. That he loved Helen for herself, or was capable of loving her or any woman in the one noble, true way, the largest limit of charitable interpretation could hardly suppose possible.

Still, she had loved him—she must have done so—with that strange, sudden idealization of love which sometimes seizes upon a woman who has reached—more than reached—mature womanhood, and never experienced the passion. And she had married him, and gone away with him—left, for his sake, father, brothers, friends—her one special friend, who was now nothing to her—nothing!

Whatever emotions the earl felt—and it would be almost sacrilegious to intrude upon them, or to venture on any idle speculation concerning them—one thing was clear; in losing Helen, the light of his eyes, the delight of his life was gone.

He sat in his chair quite still, as indeed he always was, but now it was a deathlike quietness, without the least sign of the wonderful mobility of feature and cheerfulness of voice and manner which made people so soon grow used to his infirmity—sat until his room was prepared. Then he suffered himself to be carried to his bed, which, for the first time in his life, he refused to leave for several days.

Not that he was ill—he declined any medical help, and declared that he was only "weary, weary"—at which, after his long journey, no one was surprised. He refused to see any body, even Mr. Cardross, and would suffer no one beside him but his old nurse, Mrs. Campbell, whom he seemed to cling to as when he was a little child. For hours she sat by his bed, watching him, but scarcely speaking a word; and for hours he lay, his eyes wide open, but with that blank expression in them which Mrs. Campbell had first noticed when he sat by the housekeeper's fire.

"My bairn! My bairn!" was all she said—for she loved him. And, somehow, her love comforted him. "Ye maun live, ye maun live. Maybe they'll need ye yet," sobbed she, without explaining—perhaps without knowing—who "they" meant. But she knew enough of her "bairn" to know that if any thing would rouse him it was the thought of other folk.

"Do you think so, nurse? Do you think I can be of any good to any creature in this world?"

"Ay, ye can, ye can, my lord—ye'd be awfully missed gin ye were to dee."

"Then I'll no dee"—faintly smiling, and using the familiar speech of his childhood. "Call Malcolm. I'll try to rise. And, nurse, if you would have the carriage ordered—the pony carriage—I will drive down to the Manse and see how Mr. Cardross is. He must be rather dull without his daughter."

The earl did not—and it was long before he did—call her by name. But after that day he always spoke of her as usual to every body; and from that hour he rose from his bed, and went about his customary work in his customary manner, taking up all his duties as if he had never left them, and as if nothing had ever happened to disturb the even tenor of his life—the strange, peaceful, and yet busy life led by the solitary master of Cairnforth.



Chapter 11

It happened that, both this day and the day following, Mr. Cardross was absent on one of his customary house-to-house visitings in remote corners of his parish. So the earl, before meeting Helen's father, had time to hear from other sources all particulars about her marriage— at least all that were known to the little world of Cairnforth.

The minister himself had scarcely more to communicate, except the fact, of which he seemed perfectly certain, that her absence would not exceed six months, when Captain Bruce had faithfully promised to come back and live upon his half pay in the little peninsula. Otherwise Mr. Cardross was confident his "dear lassie" would never have left her father for any man alive.

It was a marriage, externally, both natural and suitable; the young couple being of equal age and circumstances, and withal tolerably well acquainted with one another, for it appeared the captain had begun daily visits to the Manse from the very day of Lord Cairnforth's departure.

"And he always spoke so warmly of you, expressed such gratitude toward you, such admiration of you—I think it was that which won Helen's heart. And when he did ask her to marry him, she would not accept him for a good while, not till after he had seen you in Edinburg."

"Seen me in Edinburg!" repeated the earl, amazed, and then suddenly stopped himself. It was necessary for Helen's sake, for every body's sake, to be cautious over every word he said; to arrive at full confirmation of his suspicions before he put into the poor father's heart one doubt that Helen's marriage was not as happy or as honorable as the minister evidently believed it to be.

"He told us you seemed so well," continued Mr. Cardross; "that you were in the very whirl of Edinburg society, and delighted in it; that you had said to him that nothing could be more to your mind than this marriage, and that if it could be carried out without waiting for your return, which was so very uncertain, you would be all the happier. Was that not true?"

"No," said the earl.

"You wish she had waited till your return?"

"Yes."

The minister looked sorry; but still he evidently had not the slightest suspicion that aught was amiss.

"You must forgive my girl," said he. "She meant no disrespect to her dear old friend; but messages are so easily misconstrued. And then, you see, a lover's impatience must be considered. We must excuse Captain Bruce, I think. No wonder he was eager to get our Helen."

And the old man smiled rather sadly, and looked wistfully round the Manse parlor, whence the familiar presence had gone, and yet seemed lingering still—in her flower-stand, her little table, her work-basket; for Mr. Cardross would not have a single article moved. "She will like to see them all when she comes back again," said he.

"And you—were you quite satisfied with the marriage?" asked the earl, making his question and the tone of it as commonplace and cautious as he could.

"Why not? Helen loved him, and I loved Helen. Besides, my own married life was so happy; God forbid I should grudge any happiness to my children. I knew nothing but good of the lad; and you liked him too; Helen told me you had specially charged her, if ever she had an opportunity, to be kind to him."

Lord Cairnforth almost groaned.

"Captain Bruce declared you must have said it because you knew of his attachment, which he had not had courage to express before, but had rather appeared to slight her, to hide his real feelings, until he was assured of your consent."

The earl listened, utterly struck dumb. The lies were so plausible, so systematic, so ingeniously fitted together, that he could almost have deluded himself into supposing them truth. No wonder, then, that they had deluded simple Helen, and her even simpler and more unworldly father.

And now the cruel question presented itself, how far the father was to be undeceived?

The earl was, both by nature and circumstances, a reserved character; that is, he did not believe in the duty of every body to tell out every thing. Helen often argued with him, and even laughed at him, for this; but he only smiled silently, and held to his own opinion, taught by experience. He knew well that her life—her free open, happy life, was not like his life, and never could be. She had yet to learn that bitter but salutary self-restraint, which, if it has to suffer, often for others' sake as well as for its own, prefers to suffer alone.

But Lord Cairnforth had learned this to the full. Otherwise, as he sat in the Manse parlor, listening patiently to Helen's father, and in the newness and suddenness of her loss, and the strong delusion of his own fond fancy, imagining every minute he heard her step on the stair and her voice in the hall, he must have utterly broken down.

He did not do so. He maintained his righteous concealment, his noble deceit—to the very last; spending the whole evening with Mr. Cardross, and quitting him without having betrayed a word of what he dreaded—what he was almost sure of.

Though the marriage might be, and no doubt was, a perfectly legal and creditable marriage in the eye of the world, still, in the eyes of honest men, it would be deemed altogether unworthy and unfortunate, and he knew the minister would think it so. How could he tell the poor old father, who had so generously given up his only daughter for the one simple reason—sufficient reason for any righteous marriage— "Helen loved him," that his new son-in-law was proved by proof irresistible to be a deliberate liar, a selfish, scheming, mercenary knave?

So, under this heavy responsibility, Lord Cairnforth decided to do what, in minor matters, he had often noticed Helen do toward her gentle and easily-wounded father—to lay upon him no burdens greater than he could bear, but to bear them herself for him. And in this instance the earl's only means of so doing, for the present at least, was by taking refuge in that last haven of wounded love and cruel suffering— silence.

The earl determined to maintain a silence unbroken as the grave regarding all the past, and his own relations with Captain Bruce— that is, until he saw the necessity for doing otherwise.

One thing, however, smote his heart with a sore pang, which, after a week or so, he could not entirely conceal from Mr. Cardross. Had Helen left him—him, her friend from childhood—no message, no letter? Had her happy love so completely blotted out old ties that she could go away without one word of farewell to him?

The minister thought not. He was sure she had written; she had said she should, the night before her marriage, and he had heard her moving about in her room, and even sobbing, he fancied, long after the house was gone to rest. Nay, he felt sure he had seen her on her wedding morning give a letter to Captain Bruce, saying "it was to be posted to Edinburg."

"Where, you know, we believed you then were, and would remain for some time. Otherwise I am sure my child would have waited, that you might have been present at her marriage. And to think you should have come back the very next day! She will be so sorry!"

"Do you think so?" said the earl, sadly, and said no more.

But, on his return to the Castle, he saw lying on his study-table a letter, in the round, firm, rather boyish hand, familiar to him as that of his faithful amanuensis of many years.

"It's surely frae Miss Helen—Mrs. Bruce, that is," said Malcolm, lifting it. "But folk in love are less mindfu' than ordinar. She's directed it to Charlotte Square, Edinburg, and then carried it up to London wi' hersel', and some other body, the captain, I think, has redirected it to Cairnforth Castle."

"No remarks, Malcolm," interrupted the earl, with unwonted sharpness. "Break the seal and lay the letter so that I can read it. Then you may go."

Bur, when his servant had gone, he closed his eyes in utter hopelessness of dejection, for he saw how completely Helen had been deceived.

Her letter ran thus—her poor, innocent letter—dated ever so long ago—indeed, the time when she had told her father she should write —the night before her marriage-day:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,—I am very busy, but have striven hard to find an hour in which to write to you, for I do not think people forget their friends because they have gotten other people to be mindful of too. I think a good and happy love only makes other loves feel closer and dearer. I am sure I have been greeting (Old English: weeping) like a bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married, whenever I called to mind you and my dear father. You will be very good to him while I am away? But I need not ask you that. Six months, he says—I mean Captain Bruce—will, according to the Edinburg doctor's advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for he declares he likes no other place half so well.

"I am right to go with him for these six months—am I not? But I need not ask; you sent me word so yourself. He had nobody to take care of him—nobody in the world but me. His sisters are gay, lively girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost strangers. He tells me I might as well send him away to die at once, unless I went with him as his wife. So I go.

"I hope he will come home quite strong and well, and able to begin building our cottage on that wee bit of ground on the hill-side above Cairnforth which you have promised to give to him. I am inexpressibly happy about it. We shall all live so cheerily together—and meet every day—the Castle, the Manse, and the Cottage. When I think of that, and of my coming back, I am almost comforted for this sad going away—leaving my dear father, and the boys, and you.

"Papa has been so good to me, you do not know. I shall never forget it —nor will Ernest. Ernest thought he would stand in the way of our marriage, but he did not. He said I must choose for myself, as he had done when he married my dearest mother; that I had been a good girl to him, and a good daughter would make a good wife; also that a good wife would not cease to be a good daughter because she was married— especially living close at hand, as we shall always live: Ernest has promised it.

"Thus, you see, nobody I love will lose me at all, nor shall I forget them: I should hate myself if it were possible. I shall be none the less a daughter to my father—none the less a friend to you. I will never, never forget you, my dear!" (here the writing became blurred, as if large drops had fallen on the paper while she wrote.) "It is twelve o'clock, and I must bid you good-night—and God bless you ever and ever! The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to you.

"Your faithful and loving friend,

"Helen Cardross."

Thus she had written, and thus he sat and read—these two, who had been and were so dear to one another. Perhaps the good angels, who watch over human lives and human destinies, might have looked with pity upon both.

As for Helen's father, and Helen herself too, if (as some severe judges may say) they erred in suffering themselves to be thus easily deceived —in believing a man upon little more than his own testimony, and in loving him as bad men are sometimes loved, under a strong delusion, by even good women, surely the errors of unworldliness, unselfishness, and that large charity which "thinketh no evil" are not so common in this world as to be quite unpardonable. Better, tenfold, to be sinned against than sinning.

"Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart which, if believed, Had bless'd one's life with true believing."

Lord Cairnforth did not think this at the time, but he learned to do so afterward. He learned, when time brought round its divine amende, neither to reproach himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion or deliberate injustice.

Meanwhile, the marriage was accomplished. All that Helen's fondest friend could do was to sit and watch the event of things, as the earl determined to watch—silently, but with a vigilance that never slept. Not passively neither. He took immediate steps, by means which his large fortune and now wide connection easily enable him to employ, to find out exactly the position of Helen's husband, both his present circumstances, and, so far as was possible, his antecedents, at home or abroad. For after the discovery of so many atrocious, deliberate lies, every fact that Captain Bruce had stated concerning himself remained open to doubt.

However, the lies were apparently that sort of falsehood which springs from a brilliant imagination, a lax conscience, and a ready tongue— prone to say whatever comes easiest and upper most. Also, because probably following the not uncommon Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means, he had, for whatever reason he best knew, determined to marry Helen Cardross, and took his own measures accordingly.

The main facts of his self-told history turned out to be correct. He was certainly the identical Ernest Henry Bruce, only surviving son of Colonel Bruce, and had undoubtedly been in India, a captain in the Company's service. His medals were veritable—won by creditable bravery. No absolute moral turpitude could be discovered concerning him —only a careless, reckless life; and utter indifference to debt; and a convenient readiness to live upon other people's money rather than his own—qualities not so rare, or so sharply judged in the world at large, as they were likely to be by the little world of innocent, honest Cairnforth.

And yet he was young—he had married a good wife—he might mend. At present, plain and indisputable, his character stood— good-natured, kindly—perhaps not even unlovable—but destitute of the very foundations of all that constitutes worth in a man—or woman either—truthfulness, independence, honor, honesty. And he was Helen's husband—Helen, the true and the good; the poor minister's daughter, who had been brought up to think that it was better to starve upon porridge and salt than to owe any one a halfpenny! What sort of a marriage could it possibly turn out to be?

To this question, which Lord Cairnforth asked himself continually, in an agony of doubt, no answer came—no clue whatsoever, though, from even the first week, Helen's letters reached the Manse as regularly as clock work. But they were merely outside letters—very sweet and loving —telling her father every thing that could interest him about foreign places, persons, and things; only of herself and her own feelings saying almost nothing. It was unlikely she should: the earl laid this comfort to his soul twenty times a day. She was married now; she could not be expected to be frank as in her girlhood; still, this total silence, so unnatural to her candid disposition, alarmed him.

But there was no resource—no help. Into that secret chamber which her own hand thus barred, no other hand could presume to break. No one could say—ought to say to a wife, "Your husband is a scoundrel."

And besides, (to this hope Lord Cairnforth clung with a desperation heroic as bitter), Captain Bruce might not be an irredeemable scoundrel; and he might—there was still a chance—have married Helen not altogether from interested motives. She was so lovable that he might have loved her, or have grown to love her, even though he had slighted her at first.

"He must have loved her—he could not help it," groaned the earl, inwardly, when the minister and others stabbed him from time to time with little episodes of the courting days—the captain's devotedness to Helen, and Helen's surprised, fond delight at being so much "made of" by the first lover who had ever wooed her, and a lover whom externally any girl would have been proud of. And then the agonized cry of another faithful heart went up to heaven—"God grant he may love her; that she may be happy—anyhow—any where!"

But all this while, with the almost morbid prevision of his character, Lord Cairnforth took every precaution that Helen should be guarded, as much as was possible, in case there should befall her that terrible calamity, the worst that can happen to a woman—of being compelled to treat the husband and father, the natural protector, helper, and guide of herself and her children, as not only her own, but their natural enemy.

The earl did not cancel Helen's name from his will; he let every thing stand as before her marriage; but he took the most sedulous care to secure her fortune unalienably to herself and her offspring. This, because, if Captain Bruce were honest, such precaution could not affect him in the least: man and wife are one flesh—settlements were a mere form, which love would only smile at, and at which any honorable man must be rather glad of than otherwise. But if her husband were dishonorable, Helen was made safe, so far as worldly matters went— safe, except for the grief from which, alas! no human friend can protect another—a broken heart!

Was her heart broken or breaking?

The earl could not tell nor even guess. She left them at home not a loophole whereby to form a conjecture. Her letters came regularly, from January until May, dated from all sorts of German towns, chiefly gambling towns; but the innocent dwellers at Cairnforth (save the earl) did not know this fact. They were sweet, fond letters as ever— mindful, with a pathetic minuteness, of every body and every thing at the dear old home; but not a complaint was breathed—not a murmur of regret concerning her marriage. She wrote very little of her husband; gradually, Lord Cairnforth fancied, less and less. They had not been to the south of France, as was ordered by the physicians, and intended. He preferred, she said, these German town, where he met his own family— his father and sisters. Of these, as even the minister himself at length noticed with surprise, Helen gave no description, favorable or otherwise; indeed, did not say of her husband's kindred, beyond the bare fact that she was living with them, one single word.

Eagerly the earl scanned her letters—those long letters, which Mr. Cardross brought up immediately to the Castle and then circulated their contents round the whole parish with the utmost glee and pride; for the whole parish was in its turn dying to hear news of "Miss Helen." Still, nothing could be discovered of her real life and feelings. And at last her friend's fever of uneasiness calmed down a little; he contented himself with still keeping a constant watch over all her movements— speaking to no one, trusting no one, except so far as he was obliged to trust the old clerk who was once sent down by Mr. Menteith, and who had now come to end his days at Cairnforth, in the position of the earl's private secretary—as faithful and fond as a dog, and as safely silent.

So wore the time away, as it wears on with all of us, through joy and sorrow, absence or presence, with cheerful fullness or aching emptiness of heart. It brought spring back, and summer—the sunshine to the hills, and the leaves, and flowers, and birds to the woods; it brought the earl's birthday—kept festively as ever by his people, who loved him better every year; but it did not bring Helen home to Cairnforth.



Chapter 12

Life, when we calmly analyze it, is made up to us all alike of three simple elements—joy, sorrow, and work. Some of us get tolerably equal proportions of each of these; some unequal—or we fancy so; but in reality, as the ancient sage says truly, "the same things come alike to all."

The Earl of Cairnforth, in his imperfect fragment of a life, had had little enough of enjoyment; but he knew how to endure better than most people. He had, however, still to learn that existence is not wholly endurance; that a complete human life must have in it not only submission but resistance; the fighting against evil and in defense of good; the struggle with divine help to overcome evil with good; and finally the determination not to sit down tamely to misery but to strive after happiness—lawful happiness, both for ourselves and others. In short, not only passively to accept joy or grief, but to take means to secure the one and escape the other; to "work out our own salvation" for each day, as we are told to do it for an eternity, though with the same divine limitation—humbling to all pride, and yet encouraging to ceaseless effort—"for it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

That self-absorption of loss, which follows all great anguish; that shrinking up unto one's self, which is the first and most natural instinct of a creature smitten with a sorrow not unmingled with cruel wrong, is, with most high natures, only temporary. By-and-by comes the merciful touch which says to the lame, "Arise and walk;" to the sick, "Take up thy bed and go into thine house." And the whisper of peace is, almost invariably, a whisper of labor and effort: there is not only something to be suffered, but something to be done.

With the earl this state was longer in coming, because the prior collapse did not come to him at once. The excitement of perpetual expectation—the preparing for some catastrophe, which he felt sure was to follow, and the incessant labor entailed by his wide enquiries, in which he had no confidant but Mr. Mearns, the clerk, and him he trusted as little as possible, lest any suspicion or disgrace should fall upon Helen's husband—all this kept him in a state of unnatural activity and strength.

But when the need for action died away; when Helen's letters betrayed nothing; and when, though she did not return, and while expressing most bitter regret, yet gave sufficiently valid reasons for not returning in her husband's still delicate health—after June, Lord Cairnforth fell into a condition, less of physical than mental sickness, which lasted a long time, and was very painful to himself, as well as to those that loved him. He was not ill, but his usual amount of strength—so small always—became much reduced; neither was he exactly irritable —his sweet temper never could sink into irritability; but he was, as Malcolm expressed it, "dour," difficult to please; easily fretted about trifles; inclined to take sad and cynical views of things.



This might have been increased by certain discoveries, which, during the summer, when he came to look into his affairs, Lord Cairnforth made. He found that money which he had entrusted to Captain Bruce for various purposes had been appropriated, or misappropriated, in different ways —conduct scarcely exposing the young man to legal investigation, and capable of being explained away as "carelessness"—"unpunctuality in money matters"—and so on, but conduct of which no strictly upright, honorable person would ever have been guilty. This fact accounted for another—the captain's having expressed ardent gratitude for a sum which he said the earl had given him for his journey and marriage expenses, which, though Mr. Cardross's independent spirit rather revolted from the gift, at least satisfied him about Helen's comfort during her temporary absence. And once more, for Helen's sake, the earl kept silence. But he felt as if every good and tender impulse of his nature were hardening into stone.

Hardened at the core Lord Cairnforth could never be; no man can whose heart has once admitted into its deepest sanctuary the love of One who, when all human loves fail, still whispers, "We will come in unto him, and make our abode with him"—ay, be it the forlornest bodily tabernacle in which immortal soul ever dwelt. But there came an outer crust of hardness over his nature which was years before it quite melted away. Common observers might not perceive it—Mr. Cardross even did not; still it was there.

The thing was inevitable. Right or wrong, deservedly or undeservedly, most of us have at different crises of our lives known this feeling— the bitter sense of being wronged; of having opened one's heart to the sunshine, and had it all blighted and blackened with frost; of having laid one's self down in a passion of devotedness for beloved feet to walk upon, and been trampled upon, and beaten down to the dust. And as months slipped by, and there came no Helen, this feeling, even against his will and his conscience, grew very much upon Lord Cairnforth. In time it might have changed him to a bitter, suspicious, disappointed cynic, had there not also come to him, with strong conviction, one truth —a truth preached on the shores of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago —the only truth that can save the wronged heart from breaking— that he who gives away only a cup of cold water shall in no wise lose his reward. Still, the reward is not temporal, and is rarely rewarded in kind. He—and He alone—to whom the debt is due, repays it; not in our, but in his own way. One only consolation remains to the sufferers from ingratitude, but that one is all-sufficing: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me."

All autumn, winter, and during another spring and summer, Helen's letters—most fond, regular, and (to her father) satisfactory— contained incessant and eager hopes of return, which were never fulfilled. And gradually she ceased to give any reason for their non-fulfillment, simply saying, with a sad brevity of silence, which one, at least, of her friends knew how to comprehend and appreciate, that her coming home at present was "impossible."

"It's very true," said the good minister, disappointed as he was: "a man must cleave to his wife, and a woman to her husband. I suppose the captain finds himself better in warm countries—he always said so. My bairn will come back when she can—I know she will. And the boys are very good—specially Duncan."

For Mr. Cardross had now, he thought, discovered germs of ability in his youngest boy, and was concentrating all his powers in educating him for college and the ministry. This, and his growing absorption in his books, reconciled him more than might have been expected to his daughter's absence; or else the inevitable necessity of things, which, as we advance in years, becomes so strange and consoling an influence over us, was working slowly upon the good old minister. He did not seem heart-broken or even heart-wounded—he did his parish work with unfailing diligence; but as, Sunday after Sunday, he passed from the Manse garden through the kirk-yard, where, green and moss-covered now, was the one white stone which bore the name of "Helen Lindsay, wife of the Reverend Alexander Cardross," he was often seen to glance at it less sorrowfully than smilingly. Year by year, the world and its cares were lessening and slipping away from him, as they had long since slipped from her who once shared them all. She now waited for him in that eternal reunion which the marriage union teaches, as perhaps none other can, to realize as a living fact and natural necessity.

But it was different with the earl. Sometimes, in an agony of bitterness, he caught himself blaming her—Helen—whom her old father never blamed; wondering how much she had found out of her husband's conduct and character; speculating whether it was possible to touch pitch and not be defiled; and whether the wife of Captain Bruce had become in any way different from, and inferior to, innocent Helen Cardross.

Lord Cairnforth had never answered her letter—he could not, without being a complete hypocrite; and she had not written again. He did not expect it—scarcely wished it—and yet the blank was sore. More and more he withdrew from all but necessary associations, shutting himself up in the Castle for weeks together—neither reading, nor talking much to any one, but sitting quite still—he always sat quite still—by the fireside in his little chair. He felt creeping over him that deadness to external things which makes pain itself seem comparatively almost sweet. Once he was heard to say, looking wistfully at Mrs. Campbell, who had been telling him with many tears, of a "freend o' hers" who had just died down at the clachan, "Nurse, I wish I could greet like you."

The first thing which broke up in his heart this bitter, blighting frost was, as so often happens, the sharp-edged blow of a new trouble.

He had not been at the Manse for two or three weeks, and had not even heard of the family for several days, when, looking up from his seat in church, he was startled by the apparition of an unfamiliar face in the pulpit—a voluble, flowery-tongued, foolish young assistant, evidently caught haphazard to fill the place which Mr. Cardross, during a long term of years, had never vacated, except at communion seasons. It gave his faithful friend and pupil a sensation almost of pain to see any new figure there, and not the dear old minister's, with his long white hair, his earnest manner, and his simple, short sermon. Shorter and simpler the older he grew, till he often declared he should end by preaching like the beloved apostle John, who, tradition says, in his latter days, did nothing but repeat, over and over again, to all around him, his one exhortation—he, the disciple whom Jesus loved—

"Little children, love one another."

On inquiry after service, the earl found that Mr. Cardross had been ailing all week, and had had on Saturday to procure in haste this substitute. But, on going to the Manse, the earl found him much as usual, only complaining of a numbness in his arm.

"And," he said, with a composure very different from his usual nervousness about the slightest ailment, "Now I remember, my mother died of paralysis. I wish Helen would come home."

"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 lassies—no fremd (archaic: strange, foreign) folk. Tell them never to fear for 'poortith 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 lassie; 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 lassie 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 circumstances 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 prone 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 circumstances 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 morass, 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.

"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 masses 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 coarse, 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 God!"

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 circumstances 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 passing 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 passively; 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; God 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 assenting 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 passed 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 passive in the earl's hands and in those of Mrs. Campbell—Lord Cairnforth learned all he required about the circumstances 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 constitution, 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".

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 accumulate daily. There was Mr. Cardross to be kept patient by the assurance 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 assistance 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 associates. 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 shores 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 unobtrusive 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 passively 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 repetition of the mother in the son which Dame Nature delights in, and out of which she sometimes makes the finest and noblest 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 circumstances, you must have guessed it long ago—that Cairnforth Castle, and my whole property, will be yours sometime?"