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.