If the "happiest day in all his life" had been the first day the earl
spent at Cairnforth Manse, which very likely it was, he took the first
possible opportunity of renewing his happiness.
Early on Monday forenoon, while Helen's ever-active hands were still
busy clearing away the six empty porridge plates, and the one tea-cup
which had contained the beverage which the minister loved, but which was
too dear a luxury for any but the father of the family, Malcolm
Campbell's large shadow was seen darkening the window.
"There's the earl!" cried Helen, whose quick eye had already caught
sight of the white little face muffled up in Malcolm's plaid, and the
soft black curls resting on his shoulder, damp with rain, and blown
about by the wind, for it was what they called at Loch Beg a "coarse"
day.
"My lord was awful' set upon coming," said Malcolm apologetically; "and
when my lord taks a thing into his heid, he'll aye do't, ye ken."
"We are very glad to see the earl," returned the minister, who
nevertheless looked a little perplexed; for, while finishing his
breakfast, he had been confiding to Helen how very nervous he felt about
this morning's duties at the Castle--how painful it would be to teach
a child so afflicted, and how he wished he had thought twice before he
undertook the charge. And Helen had been trying to encourage him by
telling him all that had passed between herself and the boy--how
intelligent he had seemed, and how eager to learn. Still, the very fact
that they had been discussing him made Mr. Cardross feel slightly
confused. Men shrink so much more than women from any physical
suffering or deformity; besides, except those few moments in the church,
this was really the first time he had beheld Lord Cairnforth; for on
Sundays it was the minister's habit to pass the whole time between
sermons in his study, and not join the family table until tea.
"We are very glad to see the earl at all times," repeated he, but
hesitatingly, as if not sure that he was quite speaking the truth.
"Yes, very glad," added Helen, hastily, fancying she could detect in the
prematurely acute and sensitive face a consciousness that he was not
altogether welcome. "My father was this minute preparing to start for
the Castle."
"My Lord didna like to trouble the minister to be walking out this
coarse day," said Malcolm, with true Highland ingenuity of politeness.
"His lordship thocht that instead o' Mr. Cardross coming to him, he
would just come to Mr. Cardross."
"No, Malcolm," interposed the little voice, "it was not exactly that. I
wished for my own sake to come to the Manse again, and to ask if I might
come every day and take my lessons here--it's so dreary in that big
library. I'll not be much trouble, indeed, sir," he added,
entreatingly; "Malcolm will carry me in and carry me out. I can sit on
almost any sort of chair now; and with this wee bit of stick in my hand
I can turn over the leaves of my books my very own self--I assure you
I can."
The minister walked to the window. He literally could not speak for a
minute, he felt so deeply moved, and in his secret heart so very much
ashamed of himself.
When he turned round Malcolm had placed the little figure in an
arm-chair by the fire, and was busy unswathing the voluminous folds of
the plaid in which it had been wrapped. Helen, after a glance or two,
pretended to be equally busy over her daily duty--the common duty of
Scotch housewives at that period--of washing up the delicate china
with her own neat hands, and putting it safe away in the parlor press;
for, as before said, Mr. Cardross's income was very small, and, like
that of most country ministers, very uncertain, his stipend altering
year by year, according to the price of corn. They kept one "lassie" to
help, but Helen herself had to do a great deal of the housework. She
went on doing it now, as probably she would in any case, being at once
too simple and too proud to be ashamed of it; still, she was glad to
seem busy, lest the earl might have fancied she was watching him.
Her feminine instinct had been right. Now for the first time taken out
of his shut-up nursery life, where he himself had been the principal
object--where he had no playfellows and no companions save those he
had been used to from infancy--removed from this, and brought into
ordinary family life, the poor child felt--he could not but feel--
the sad, sad difference between himself and all the rest of the world.
His color came and went--he looked anxiously, deprecatingly, at Mr.
Cardross.
"I hope, sir, you are not displeased with me for coming to-day. I shall
not be very much trouble to you--at least I will try to be as little
trouble as I can."
"My boy," said the minister, crossing over to him and laying his hand
upon his head, "You will not be the least trouble; and if you were ever
so much, I would undertake it for the sake of your father and mother,
and--" he added, more to himself than aloud--"for your own."
That was true. Nature, which is never without her compensations, had
put into this child of ten years old a strange charm, and inexpressible
loveableness which springs from lovingness, though every loving nature
is not fortunate enough to possess it. But the earl's did; and as he
looked up into the minister's face, with that touchingly grateful
expression he had, the good man felt his heart melt and brim over at his
eyes.
"You don't dislike me, then, because--because I am not like other
boys?"
Mr. Cardross smiled, though his eyes were still dim, and his voice not
clear; and with that smile vanished forever the slight repulsion he had
felt to the poor child. He took him permanently into his good heart,
and from his manner the earl at once knew that it was so.
He brightened up immediately.
"Now, Malcolm, carry me in; I'm quite ready," said he, in a tone which
indicated that quality, discernible even at so early an age--a "will
of his own." To see the way he ordered Malcolm about--the big fellow
obeying him, with something beyond even the large limits of that feudal
respect which his forbears had paid to the earl's forbears for many a
generation, was a sight at once touching and hopeful.
"There--put me into the child's chair I had at dinner yesterday. Now
fetch me a pillow--or rather roll up your plaid into one--don't
trouble Miss Cardross. That will make me quite comfortable. Pull out
my books from your pouch, Malcolm, and spread them out on the table, and
then go and have a crack with your old friends at the clachan; you can
come for me in two hours."
It was strange to see the little figure giving its orders, and settling
itself with the preciseness of an old man at the study-table; but still
this removed somewhat of the painful shyness and uncomfortableness from
every body, and especially from Mr. Cardross. He sat himself down in
his familiar arm-chair, and looked across the table at his poor little
pupil, who seemed at once so helpless and so strong.
Lessons begun. The child was exceedingly intelligent--precociously,
nay, preternaturally so, it appeared to Mr. Cardross, who, like many
another learned father, had been blessed with rather stupid boys, who
liked any thing better than study, and whom he had with great labor
dragged through a course of ordinary English, Latin, and even a fragment
of Greek. But this boy seemed all brains. His cheeks flushed, his eyes
glittered, he learned as if he actually enjoyed learning. True, as Mr.
Cardross soon discovered, his acquirements were not at all in the
regular routine of education; he was greatly at fault in many simple
things; but the amount of heterogeneous and out-of-the-way knowledge
which he had gathered up, from all available sources, was quite
marvelous. And, above all, to teach a boy unto whom learning seemed a
pleasure rather than a torment, a favor instead of a punishment, was
such an exceeding and novel delight to the good minister, that soon he
forgot the crippled figure--the helpless hands that sometimes with
fingers, sometimes even with teeth, painfully guided the ingeniously cut
forked stick, and the thin face that only too often turned white and
weary, but quickly looked up, as if struggling against weakness, and
concentrating all attention on the work that was to be done.
At twelve o'clock Helen came in with her father's lunch--a foaming
glass of new milk, warm from the cow. The little earl looked at it with
eager eyes.
"Will I bring you one too?" said Helen.
"Oh--thank you; I am so thirsty. And, please, would you move me a
little--just a very little; I don't often sit so long in one
position. It won't trouble you very much, will it?"
"Not at all, if you will only show me how," stammered Helen, turning hot
and red. But, shaking off her hesitation, she lifted up the poor child
tenderly and carefully, shook his pillows and "sorted" him according to
her own untranslatable Scotch word, then went quickly out of the room to
compose herself, for she had done it all, trembling exceedingly the
while. And yet, somehow, a feeling of great tenderness--tenderer
than even she had felt successively toward her own baby brothers, had
grown up in her heart toward him, taking away every possible feeling of
repulsion on account of his deformity.
She brought back the glass of creamy milk and a bit of oatcake, and laid
them beside the earl. He regarded them wistfully.
"How nice the milk looks! I am so tired--and so thirsty. Please--
would you give me some? Just hold the glass, that's all, and I can
manage."
Helen held it to his lips--the first time she ever did so, but not
the last by many. Years and years from then, when she herself was quite
an old woman, she remembered, giving him that drink of milk, and how,
afterward, two large soft eyes were turned upon hers so lovingly, so
gratefully, as if the poor cripple had drank in something besides milk
---the sweet draught of human affection, not dried up even to such
heavily afflicted ones as he.
"Are the lessons all done for to-day, papa?" said she, noticing that,
eager as it was, the little face looked very wan and wearied, but also
noticing with delight that her father's expression was brighter and more
interested than it had been this long time.
"Done, Helen? Well, if my pupil is tired, certainly."
"But I'm not tired, sir."
Helen shook her motherly head: "Quite enough for to-day. You may come
back again to-morrow."
He did come back. Day after day, in fair weather or foul, big Malcolm
was to be seen stepping with his free Highland step--Malcolm was a
lissome, handsome young fellow--across the Manse garden, carrying
that small frail burden, which all the inhabitants of the clachan had
ceased to stare at, and to which they all raised their bonnets or
touched their shaggy forelocks. "It's the wee earl, ye ken," and one
and all treated with the utmost respect the tiny figure wrapped in a
plaid, so that nothing was visible except a small child's face, which
always smiled at sight of other children.
It was surprising in how few days the clachan, and indeed the whole
neighborhood, grew accustomed to the appearance of the earl and his sad
story. Perhaps this was partly due to Helen and Mr. Cardross, who,
seeing no longer any occasion for mystery, indeed regretting a little
that any mystery had ever been made about the matter, took every
opportunity of telling every body who inquired the whole facts of the
case.
These were few enough and simple enough, though very sad. The Earl--
the last Earl of Cairnforth--was a hopeless cripple for life. All
the consultations of all the doctors had resulted in that conclusion.
It was very unlikely he would ever be better than he was now physically,
but mentally he was certainly "a' richt"--or "a' there," as the
country-folk express it. There was, as Mr. Cardross carefully explained
to every body, not the slightest ground for supposing him deficient in
intellect; on the contrary, his intellect seemed almost painfully acute.
The quickness with which he learned his lessons surpassed that of any
boy of his age the minister had ever known; and he noticed every thing
around him so closely, and made such intelligent remarks, that to talk
with him was like talking with a grown man. Before the first week was
over Mr. Cardross began actually to enjoy the child's company, and to
look forward to lesson hours as the pleasantest hours of his day; for,
since the Castle was close, the minister's lot had been the almost
inevitable lot of a country clergyman, whose parish contains many
excellent people, who look up to him with the utmost reverence, and for
whom he entertains the sincere respect that worth must always feel
toward worth, but with whom he had very few intellectual sympathies. In
truth, since Mrs. Cardross died the minister had shut himself up almost
entirely, and had scarcely had a single interest out of his own study
until the earl came home to Cairnforth.
Now, after lessons, he would occasionally be persuaded to quit that
beloved study, and take a walk along the loch side, or across the moor,
to show his pupil the country of which he, poor little fellow! was owner
and lord. He did it at first out of pure kindness, to save the earl
from the well-meant intrusion of neighbors, but afterward from sheer
pleasure in seeing the boy so happy. To him, mounted in Malcolm's arms
and brought for the first time into contact with the outer world, every
thing was a novelty and delight. And his quick perception let nothing
escape him. He seemed to watch lovingly all nature, from the grand
lights and shadows which moved over the mountains, to the little
moorland flowers which he made Malcolm stop to gather. All living
things too, from the young rabbit that scudded across their path, to the
lark that rose singing up into the wide blue air--he saw and noticed
every thing.
But he never once said, what Helen, who, as often as her house duties
allowed, delighted to accompany them on these expeditions, was always
expecting he would say, Why had God given these soulless creatures legs
to run and wings to fly, strength, health, and activity to enjoy
existence, and denied all these things to him? Denied them, not for a
week, a month, a year, but for his whole lifetime--a lifetime so
short at best;--"few of days, and full of trouble." Why could He not
have made it a little more happy?
Thousands have asked themselves, in some form or other, the same
unanswered, unanswerable question. Helen had done so already, young as
she was; when her mother died, and her father seemed slowly breaking
down, and the whole world appeared to her full of darkness and woe. How
then must it have appeared to this poor boy? But, strange to say, that
bitter doubt, which so often came into Helen's heart, never fell from
child's lips at all. Either he was still a mere child, accepting life
just as he saw it, and seeking no solution of its mysteries, or else,
though so young, he was still strong enough to keep his doubts to
himself, to bear his own burden, and trouble no one.
Or else--and when she watched his inexpressibly sweet face, which had
the look you sometimes see in blind faces, of absolutely untroubled
peace, Helen was forced to believe this--God, who had taken away from
him so much, had given him something still more--a spiritual insight
so deep and clear that he was happy in spite of his heavy misfortune.
She never looked at him but she thought involuntarily of the text, out
of the only book with which unlearned Helen was very familiar--that
"in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is
in heaven."
After a fortnight's stay at the Castle Mr. Menteith felt convinced that
his experiment had succeeded, and that, onerous as the duty of guardian
was, he might be satisfied to leave his ward under the charge of Mr.
Cardross.
"Only, it those Bruces should try to get at him, you must let me know at
once. Remember, I trust you."
"Certainly, you may. Has any thing been heard of them lately?"
"Nothing much, beyond the continual applications for advances of the
annual sum which the late earl gave them, and which I continue to pay,
just to keep them out of the way."
"They are still abroad?"
"I suppose so; but I hear very little about them. They were relations
on the countess's side, you know--it was she who brought the money.
Poor little fellow, what an accumulation it will be by the time he is of
age, and what small good it will do him!"
And the honest man sighed as he looked from Mr. Cardross's dining-room
window across the Manse garden, where, under a shady tree, was placed
the earl's little wheel-chair, which was an occasional substitute for
Malcolm's arms. In it he sat, with a book on his lap, and with the
aspect of entire content which was so very touching. Helen sat beside
him on the grass, sewing--she was always sewing; and, indeed, she had
need, if her needle were to keep pace with its requirements in the large
family of boys.
"That's a good girl of yours, and his lordship seems to have taken to
her amazingly. I am very glad, for he had no feminine company at all
except Mrs. Campbell, and, good as she is, she isn't quite the thing--
not exactly a lady, you see. Eh, Mr. Cardross--what a lady his
mother was! We'll never again see the like of the poor countess, nor,
in all human probability, will we ever again see another Countess of
Cairnforth.
"No."
"Yet," continued Mr. Menteith, after a long pause, "Dr. Hamilton thinks
he may live many years. Strange to say, his constitution is healthy and
sound, and his sweet, placid nature--his mother's own nature (isn't
he very like her sometimes?)--gives him so much advantage in
struggling through every ailment. If he can be made happy, as you and
Helen will, I doubt not, be able to make him, and kept strictly to a
wholesome, natural country life here, it is not impossible he may live
to enter upon his property. And then--for the future, God knows!"
"It is well for us," replied the minister, gravely, "That He does know
--every thing."
"I suppose it is."
And then for another hour the two good men--one living in the world
and the other out of it--both fathers of families, carrying their own
burden of cares, and having gone through their own personal sorrows each
in his day, talked over, the minutest degree, the present, and, so far
as they could divine it, the future of this poor boy, who, through so
strange a combination of circumstances, had been left entirely to their
charge.
"It is a most responsible charge, Mr. Cardross, and I feel almost
selfish in shifting it so much from my own shoulders upon yours."
"I am willing to undertake it. Perhaps it may do me good," returned the
minister, with a slight sigh.
"And you will give him the best education you can--your own, in
short, which is more than sufficient for Lord Cairnforth; certainly more
than the last earl had, or his father either."
"Possibly," said Mr. Cardross, who remembered both--stalwart, active,
courtly lords of the soil, great at field-sports and festivities, but
not over given to study. "No, the present earl does not take after his
progenitors in any way. You should just see him, Mr. Menteith, over his
Virgil; and I have promised to begin Homer with him tomorrow. It does
one's heart good to see a boy so fond of his books," added the minister,
warming up into an enthusiasm which delighted the other extremely.
"Yes, I think my plan was right," said he, rubbing his hands. "It will
work well on both sides. There could not be found any where a better
tutor than yourself for the earl. He never can go much into the world;
he may not even live to be of age; still, as long as he does live, his
life ought to be made as pleasant--I mean, as little painful to him
as possible. And he ought to be fitted, in case he should live, for as
many years as he can fulfill of the duties of his position; its
enjoyments, alas! he will never know."
"I am not so sure of that," replied Mr. Cardross. "He loves books; he
may turn out a thoroughly educated and accomplished student--perhaps
even a man of letters. To have a thirst for knowledge, and unlimited
means to gratify it, is not such a bad thing. Why," continued the
minister, glancing round on his own poorly-furnished shelves, where
every book was bought almost at the sacrifice of a meal, "he will be
rich enough to stock from end to end that wilderness of shelves in the
half-finished Castle library. How pleasant that must be!"
Mr. Menteith smiled as if he did not quite comprehend this sort of
felicity. "But, in any case, Lord Cairnforth seems to have, what will
be quite as useful to him as brains, a very kindly heart. He does not
shut himself up in a morbid way, but takes an interest in all about him.
Look at him, now, how heartily he is laughing at something your daughter
has said. Really, those two seem quite happy."
"Helen makes every body happy," fondly said Helen's father.
"I believe so. I shall be sending down one of my big lads to look after
her some day. I've eight of them, Mr. Cardross, all to be educated,
settled, and wived. It's a 'sair fecht,' I assure you."
"I know it; but still it has its compensations."
"Ay, they're all strong, likely, braw fellows, who can push their own
way in the world and fend for themselves. Not like--" he glanced over
to the group on the grass, and stopped. Yet at that moment a hearty
trill of thoroughly childish laughter seemed to rebuke the regrets of
both fathers.
"That child certainly has the sweetest nature--the most remarkable
faculty for enjoying other people's enjoyments, in which he himself can
never share."
"Yes, it was always so, from the time he was a mere infant. Dr.
Hamilton often noticed it, and said it was a good omen."
"I believe so," rejoined Mr. Cardross, earnestly. "I feel sure that if
Lord Cairnforth lives, he will neither have a useless nor an unhappy
life."
"Let us hope not. And yet--poor little fellow!--to be the last
Earl of Cairnforth, and to be--such as he is!"
"He is what God made him, what God willed him to be," said the minister,
solemnly. "We know not why it should be so; we only know that it is,
and we can not alter it. We can not remove from him his heavy cross,
but I think we can help him to bear it."
"You are a good man, Mr. Cardross," replied the Edinburg writer,
huskily, as he rose from his seat, and declining another glass of the
claret, of which, under some shallow pretext, he had sent a supply into
the minister's empty cellar, he crossed the grass-plot, and spent the
rest of the evening beside his ward and Helen.