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.