Chapter 11

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_ 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. _

Read next: Chapter 12

Read previous: Chapter 10

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