Chapter 16

________________________________________________
_ One mild, sunny autumn day, when Cardross, having ended his first session at college, had spent apparently with extreme enjoyment his first vacation at home, and had just gone back again to Edinburg to commence his second "year," the Earl of Cairnforth drove down to the Manse, as he now did almost daily, for the minister was growing too feeble to come to the Castle very often.

His old pupil found him sitting in the garden, sunning himself in a sheltered nook, backed by a goodly show of China roses and fuchsias, and companioned by two or three volumes of Greek plays, in which, however, he did not read much. He looked up with pleasure at the sound of the wheeled chair along the gravel walk.

"I'm glad you are come," said he. "I'm sorely needing somebody, for I have scarcely seen Helen all the morning. There she is! My lassie, where have you been these three hours?"

Helen put off his question in some gentle manner, and took her place beside her charge, or rather between her two charges, each helpless in their way, though the one most helpless once was least so now.

"Helen, something is wrong with you this morning?" said the earl, when, Mr. Cardross having gone away for his little daily walk up and down between the garden and the kirk-yard, they two sat by themselves for a while.

Mrs. Bruce made no answer.

"Nothing can be amiss with your boy, for I had a letter from him only yesterday."

"I had one this morning."

"And what does he say to you? To me little enough, merely complaining how dull he finds Edinburg now, and wishing he were back again among us all."

"I do not wonder," said Helen, in a hard tone, and with that hard expression which sometimes came over her face: the earl knew it well.

"Helen, I am certain something is very wrong with you. Why do you not tell it out to me?"

"Hush! Here comes my father!"

And she hurried to him, gave him her arm, and helped his feeble steps back into the house, where for some time they three remained talking together about the little chit-chat of the parish, and the news of the family, in its various ramifications, now extending year by year. Above all, the minister like to hear and to talk about his eldest and favorite grandchild--his name-child, too--Alexander Cardross Bruce.

But on this subject, usually the never-ceasing topic at the Manse, Helen was for once profoundly silent. Even when her father had dropped asleep, as in his feebleness of age he frequently did in the very midst of conversation, she sat restlessly fingering her wedding-ring, and another which she wore as a sort of guard to it, the only jewel she possessed. It was a very large diamond, set in a plain hoop of gold. The earl had given it to her a few months after she came back to Cairnforth, when her persistent refusal of all his offered kindnesses had almost produced a breach between them--at least the nearest approach to a quarrel they had ever known. She, seeing how deeply she had wounded him, had accepted this ring as a pledge of amity, and had worn it ever since--by his earnest request--until it had become as familiar to her finger as the one beside it. But now she kept looking at it, and taking it off and on with a troubled air.

"I am going to ask you a strange question, Lord Cairnforth--a rude one, if you and I were not such old friends that we do not mind any thing we say to one another."

"Say on."

"Is this ring of mine very valuable?"

"Rather so."

"Worth how much?"

"You certainly are rude, Helen," replied the earl, with a smile. "Well, if you particularly wish to know, I believe it is worth two hundred pounds."

"Two hundred pounds!"

"Was that so alarming? How many times must I suggest that a man may do what he likes with his own? It was mine--that is, my mother's, and I gave it to you. I hope you are worth to me at least two hundred pounds."

But no cheerfulness removed the settled cloud from Mrs. Bruce's face.

"Now--answer me--you know, Helen, you always answer me candidly and truly, what makes you put that question about the ring?"

"Because I wished to sell it."

"Sell it! why?"

"I want money; in fact, I must have money--a good large sum," said Helen, in exceeding agitation. "And as I will neither beg, borrow, not steal, I must sell something to procure that sum, and this diamond is the only thing I have to sell. Now you comprehend?"

"I think I do," was the grave answer. "My poor Helen!"

She might have held out, but the tenderness of his tone overcame her. She turned her head away.

"Oh, it's bitter, bitter! After all these years!"

"What is bitter? But you need not tell me. I think I can guess. You did not show me your boy's letter of this morning."

"There it is!"

And the poor mother, with her tears fast flowing--they had been restrained so long that now they burst out like a tide--gave way to that heart-break which many a mother has had to endure--the discovery that her son was not the perfect being she had thought him; that he was no better than other women's sons, and equally liable to fall away. Poor Cardross had been doing all sorts of wrong and foolish things, which he had kept to himself as long as he could, as long as he dared, and then had come, in an agony of penitence, and poured out the whole story of his errors and his miseries into his mother's bosom.

They were, happily, only errors, not sins--extravagancies in dress; amusements and dissipations, resulting in serious expenses; but the young fellow had done nothing absolutely wicked. In the strongest manner, and with the most convincing evidence to back it, he protested this and promised to amend his ways, to "turn over a new leaf," if only his mother would forgive him, and find means to pay the heap of bills which he enclosed, and which amounted to much more than would be covered by his yearly allowance from the earl.

"Poor lad!" said Lord Cairnforth, as he read the letter twice over, and then carefully examined the list of debts it enclosed. "A common story."

"I know that," cried Helen, passionately. "But oh! That it should have happened to my son!"

And she bowed her face upon her hands, and swayed herself to and fro in the bitterest grief and humiliation.

The earl regarded her a little while, and then said, gently, "My friend, are you not making for yourself a heavy burden out of a very light matter?"

"A light matter? But you do not see--you can not understand."

"I think I can."

"It is not so much the thing itself--the fact of my son's being so mean, so dishonest as to run into debt, when he knows I hate it--that I have cause to hate it, and to shrink from it as I would from--But this is idle talking. I see you smile. You do not know all the--the dreadful past."

"My dear, I do know--every thing you could tell me--and more."

"Then can not you see what I dread? The first false step--the fatal beginning, of which no one can foresee the end? I must prevent it. I must snatch my poor boy like a brand from the burning. I shall go to Edinburg myself to-morrow. I would start this very day if could leave my father."

"You can not possibly leave your father," said the ear, gently but decisively. "Sit down, Helen. You must keep quiet."

For she was in a state of excitement such as, since her widowed days, had never been betrayed by Helen Bruce.

"These debts must be paid, and immediately. The bare thought of them nearly drives me wild. But you shall not pay--do not think it," she added, almost fiercely. "See what my son himself says--and thank God he had the grace to say it--that I am on no account to go to you; that he 'will turn writer's clerk, or tutor, or any thing, rather than encroach farther on Lord Cairnforth's generosity.'."

"Poor boy! poor boy!"

"Then you don't think him altogether a bad boy?" appealed Mrs. Bruce, pitifully. "You do not fear that I may live to weep over the day when my son was born?"

The earl smiled, and that quiet, half-amused smile, coming upon her in her excited state, seemed to soothe the mother more than any reasoning could have done.

"No, Helen, I do not think any such thing. I think the lad has been very foolish, and we may have been the same. We kept him in leading-strings too long, and trusted him out of them too suddenly. But as to his being altogether bad--Helen Cardross's son, and the minister's grandson--nonsense, my dear."

Mr. Cardross might have heard himself named, for he stirred in his peaceful slumbers, and Helen hastily took her letter from Lord Cairnforth's hand."

"Not a word to him. He is too old. No trouble must ever come near him any more."

"No, Helen. But remember your promise to do nothing till you have talked with me. It is my right, you know. The boy is my boy too. When will you come up to the Castle?" To-morrow? Nay, to-night, if you like."

"I will come to-night."

So, at dusk, in the midst of a wild storm, such as in these regions sometimes, nay, almost always succeeds very calm, mild autumn days, Helen appeared at the Castle, and went at once into the library where the earl usually sat. Strange contrast it was between the spacious apartment, with its lofty octagon walls laden with treasures of learning; book-shelves, tier upon tier, reaching to the very roof, which was painted in fresco; every ornamentation of the room being also made as perfect as its owner's fine taste and lavish means could accomplish, and this owner, this master of it all, a diminutive figure, sitting all alone by the vacant fireside--before him a little table, a lamp, and a book. But he was not reading; he was sitting thinking, as he often did now; he said he had read so much in his time that he was rather weary of it, and preferred thinking. Of what? the life he had passed through--still, uneventful, and yet a full and not empty human life? Or it might be, oftener still, upon the life to come?

Lord Cairnforth refused to let his visitor say one word, or even sit down, till he had placed her in Mrs. Campbell's charge, to be dried and reclothed, for she was dripping wet with rain--such rain as come nowhere but at Loch Beg. By-and-by she reappeared in the library, moving through its heavy shadows, and looking herself again--the calm, dignified woman, "my cousin, Mrs. Bruce," who sometimes appeared among Lord Cairnforth's guests, and whom, though she was too retiring to attract much notice, every body who did notice was sure to approve.

She took her accustomed place by the earl's side, and plunged at once, in Helen's own way, into the business which had brought her hither.

"I am not come to beg or to borrow, do not think it--only to ask advice. Tell me, what am I to say to my boy?"

And again, the instant she mentioned her son's name, she gave way to tears. Yet all the while her friend saw that she was very hard, and bent upon being hard; that, had Cardross appeared before her at that minute, she would immediately have frozen up again into the stern mother whose confidence had been betrayed, whose principles infringed, and who, though loving her son with all the strength of her heart, could also punish him with all the power of her conscience, even though her heart was breaking with sorrow the while.

"I will give you the best advice I can. But, first, let me have his letter again."

Lord Cairnforth read it slowly over, Mrs. Bruce's eager eyes watching him, and then suffered her to take it from his helpless hands, and fold it up, tenderly, as mothers do.

"What do you think of it?"

"Exactly what I did this morning--that your boy has been very foolish, but not wicked. There is no attempt at deception or untruthfulness.

"No, thank God! Whatever else he is, my son is not a liar. I have prevented or conquered that."

"Yes, because you brought him up, as your father brought us up, to be afraid of nothing, to speak out our minds to him without fear of offending him, to stand in no dread of rousing his anger, but only of grieving his love. And so, you see, Helen, it is the same with your boy. He never attempts to deceive you. He tells out, point-blank, the most foolish things he has done--the most ridiculous expenses he has run into. He may be extravagant, but he is not untruthful. I have no doubt, if I sent this list to his trades-people, they would verify every halfpenny, and that this really is the end of the list. Not such a long list neither, if you consider. Below two hundred pounds for which you were going to sell my ring."

"Were going! I shall do it still."

"If you will; though it seems a pity to part with a gift of mine, when the sum is a mere nothing to me, with my large income, which, Helen, will one day be all yours."

Helen was silent--a little sorry and ashamed. The earl talked with her till he had succeeded in calming her and bringing her into her natural self again--able to see things in their right proportions, and take just views of all.

"Then you will trust me?" she said at last. "You think I may be depended upon to do nothing rashly when I go to Edinburg to-morrow?"

"My dear, I have no intention of letting you go."

"But some one must go. Something must be done, and I can not trust Alick to do it. My brother does not understand my boy," said she, returning to her restless, helpless manner. She, the helpful Helen, only weak in this one point--her only son.

"Something has been done. I have already sent for Cardross. He will be at the Castle to-morrow."

Helen started.

"At the Castle, I said, not the Manse. No, Helen, you shall not be compromised; you may be as severe as you like with your son. But he is my son too"--and a faint shade of color passed over the earl's withered cheeks--"my adopted son, and it is time that he should know it."

"Do you mean to tell him--"

"I mean to tell him all my intentions concerning him."

"What! now?"

"Yes, now. It is the safest and most direct course, both for him, for you, and for me. I have been thinking over the matter all day, and can come to no other conclusion. Even for myself--if I may speak of myself--it is best. I do not wish to encroach upon his mother's rights--it is not likely I should," added the earl, with a somewhat sad smile; "still, it is hard that during the years, few or many, that I have to live, I, a childless man, should not enjoy a little of the comfort of a son."

Helen sat silent with averted face. It was all quite true, and yet--

"I will tell you, to make all clear, the position I wish Cardross to hold with regard to me--shall I?"

Mrs. Bruce assented.

"Into his mother's place he can never step; I do not desire it. You must still be, as you have always been, and I shall now publicly give out the fact, my immediate successor; and, except for a stated allowance, to be doubled when he marries, which I hope he will, and early, Cardross must still be dependent upon his mother during her lifetime. Afterward he inherits all. But there is one thing," he continued, seeing that Helen did not speak, "I should like: it would make me happy if, on his coming of age, he would change his name, or add mine to it--be Alexander Cardross Bruce Montgomerie, or simply Alexander Cardross Montgomerie. Which do you prefer?"

Helen meditated long. Many a change came and went over the widow's face --widowed long enough for time to have softened down all things, and made her remember only the young days--the days of a girl's first love. It might have been so, for she said at last, almost with a gasp,

"I wish my son to be Bruce-Montgomerie."

"Be it so."

After that Lord Cairnforth was long silent.

Helen resumed the conversation by asking if he did not think it dangerous, almost wrong, to tell the boy of this brilliant future immediately after his errors?

"No, not after errors confessed and forsaken. Remember, it was over very rags that the prodigal's father put upon him the purple robe. But our boy is not a prodigal, Helen. I know him well, and I have faith in him, and faith in human nature--especially Cardross nature." And the earl smiled. "Far deeper than any harshness will smite him the consciousness of being forgiven and trusted--of being expected to carry out in his future life all that was a-missing in two not particularly happy lives, his mother's--and mine."

Helen Bruce resisted no more. She could not. She was a wise woman-- a generous and loving-hearted woman; still, in that self-contained, solitary existence, which had been spent close beside her, yet into the mystery of which she had never penetrated, and never would penetrate, there was a nearness to heaven and heavenly things, and clearness of vision about earthly things which went far beyond her own. She could not quite comprehend it--she would never have thought of it herself --but she dimly felt that the earl's judgment was correct, and that, strange as his conduct might appear, he was acting after that large sense of rightness which implies righteousness; a course of action which the world so often ridicules and misconstrues, because the point of view is taken from an altitude not of this world, and the objects regarded there-from are things not visible, but invisible.

Cardross appeared next day--not at home, but at the Castle, and was closeted there for several hours with the earl before he ever saw his mother. When he did--and it was he who came to her, for she refused to take one step to go to him--he flung himself on his knees before her and sobbed in her lap--the great fellow of six feet high and twenty years old--sobbed and prayed for forgiveness with the humility of a child.

"Oh, mother, mother--and he has forgiven me too! To think what he has done for me--what he is about to do--me, who have had no father, or worse than none. Do you know, sometimes people in Edinburgh --the Menteiths, and so on--have taunted me cruelly about my father?"

"And what do you answer?" asked Helen, in a slow, cold voice.

"That he was my father, and that he was dead; and I bade them speak no more about him."

"That was right, my son."

Then they were silent till Cardross burst out again.

"It is wonderful--wonderful! I can hardly believe it yet--that we should never be poor nay more--you, mother, who have gone through so much, and I, who thought I should have to work hard all my days for both of us. And I will work!" cried the boy, as he tossed back his curls and lifted up to his mother a face that in brightness and energy was the very copy of her own, or what hers used to be. "I'll show you, and the earl too, how hard I can work--as hard as if for daily bread. I'll do every thing he wishes me--I'll be his right hand, as he says. I will make a name for myself and him too--mother, you know I am to bear his name?"

"Yes, my boy."

"And I am glad to bear it. I told him so. He shall be proud of me yet, and you too. Oh, mother, mother, I will never vex you again."

And once more his voice broke into sobs, and Helen's too, as she clasped him close, and felt that whatever God had taken away from her, He had given her as much--and more.

Mother and son--widowed mother and only son--there is something in the tie unlike all others in the world--not merely in its blessedness, but in its divine compensations.

Helen waited till her father had retired, which he often did quite early, for the days were growing too long for him, with whom every one of them was numbered; and he listened to the wonderful news which his grandson told him with the even smile of old age, which nothing now either grieves or surprises.

"You'll not be going to live at the Castle, though, not while I am alive, Helen?" was his first uneasy thought. But his daughter soon quieted it, and saw him to his bed, as she did every evening, bidding him good-night, and kissing his placid brow--placid as a child's-- just as if he had been her child instead of her father. Then she took her son's arm--such a stalwart arm now, and walked with him through the bright moonlight, clear as day, to Cairnforth Castle.

When they entered the library they found the earl sitting in his usual place, and engaged in his usual evening occupation, which he sometimes called "the hard labor of doing nothing;" for, though he was busy enough in the daytime with a young man he had as secretary--his faithful old friend, Mr. Mearns, having lately died--still, he generally spent his evenings alone. Malcolm lurked within call, in case he wanted any thing; but he rarely did. Often he would pass hours at a time sitting as now, with his feeble hands folded on his lap, his head bent, and his eyes closed, or else open and looking out straight before him-- calmly, but with an infinite yearning in them that would have seemed painful to those who did not know how peaceful his inmost nature was.

But at the first sound of his visitors' footsteps he turned round-- that is, he turned his little chair round--and welcomed them heartily and brightly.

A little ordinary talk ensued, in which Cardross scarcely joined. The young man was not himself at all--silent, abstracted; and there was an expression in his face which almost frightened his mother, so solemn was it, yet withal so exceedingly sweet.

The earl had been right in his conclusions; he, with his keen insight into character, had judged Cardross better than the boy's own mother would have done. Those brilliant prospects, that total change in his expected future, which might have dazzled a lower nature and sent it all astray, made this boy--Helen's boy, with Helen's nature strong in him, only the more sensible of his deficiencies as well as his responsibilities--humble, self-distrustful, and full of doubts and fears. Ten years seemed to have passed over his head since morning, changing him from a boy into a sedate, thoughtful man.

Lord Cairnforth noticed this, as he noticed every thing; and at last, seeing the young heart was too full almost to bear much talking, he said kindly,

"Cardross, give your mother that arm-chair; she looks very wearied. And the, would you mind having a consultation with Malcolm about those salmon-weirs at the head of the Loch Mohr? I know his is longing to open his heart to you on the subject. Go, my boy, and don't hurry back. I want to have a good long talk with your mother."

Cardross obeyed. The two friends looked after him as he walked down the room with his light, active step, and graceful, gentlemanly figure--a youth who seemed born to be heir to all the splendors around him. Helen clasped her hands tightly together on her lap, and her lips moved. She did not speak, but the earl almost seemed to hear the great outcry of the mother's heart going up to God--"Give any thing thou wilt to me, only give him all!" Alas! That such a cry should ever fall back to earth in the other pitiful moan, "Would God that I had died for thee, O Abaslom, my son--my son!"

But it was not to be so with Helen Bruce. Her son was no Absalom. Her days of sorrow were ended.

Laird Cairnforth saw how violently affected she was, and began to talk to her in a commonplace and practical manner about all that he and Cardross had been arranging that morning.

"And I must say that, though he will never shine at college, and probably his grandfather would mourn over him as having no learning, there is an amount of solid sense about the fellow with which I am quite delighted. He is companionable too--knows how to make use of his acquirements. Whatever light he possesses, he will never hide it under a bushel, which is, perhaps, the best qualification for the position that he will one day hold. I have no fear about Cardross. He will be an heir after my own heart--will accomplish all I wished, and possibly a little more."

Mrs. Bruce answered only by tears.

"But there is one thing which he and I have settled between us, subject to your approval, of course. He must go back to college immediately."

"To Edinburg?"

"Do not look so alarmed, Helen. No, not Edinburg. It is best to break off all associations there--he wishes it himself. He would like to go to a new University--St. Andrew's."

"But he knows nobody there. He would be quite alone. For I can not-- do you not see I can not?--leave my father. Oh, it is like being pulled in two," cried Mrs. Bruce, in great distress.

"Be patient, Helen, and hear. We have arranged it all, the boy and I. Next week we are both bound for St. Andrew's."

"You?"

"You think I shall be useless? That it is a man, and not such a creature as I, who ought to take charge of your boy?"

The earl spoke with that deep bitterness which sometimes, though very, very rarely, he betrayed, till he saw what exceeding pain he had given.

"Forgive me, Helen; I know you did not mean that; but it was what I myself often thought until this morning. Now I see that after all I-- even I--may be the very best person to go with the boy, because, while keeping a safe watch over him, and a cheerful house always open to him, I shall also give him somebody to take care of. I shall be as much charge to him almost as a woman, and it will be good for him. Do you not perceive this?"

Helen did, clearly enough.

"Besides," continued the earl, "I might, perhaps, like to see the world myself--just once again. At any rate, I shall like to see it through this young man's eyes. He has not told you of our plan yet?"

"Not a word."

"That is well. I like to see he can keep faith. I made him promise not, because I wanted to tell you myself, Helen--I wanted to see how you would take the plan. Will you let us go? That is, the boy must go, and--you will do without me for a year?"

"A whole year! Can not Cardross come home once--just once?"

"Yes, I will manage it so; he shall come, even if I can not," replied the earl, and then was silent.

"And you," said Mrs. Bruce, suddenly, after a long meditation upon her son and his future, "you leave, for a year, your home, your pleasant life here; you change all your pursuits and plans, and give yourself no end of trouble, just to go and watch over my boy, and keep his mother's heart from aching! How can I ever thank you--ever reward you?"

No, she never could.

"It is an ugly word, 'reward;' I don't like it. And, Helen, I thought thanks were long since set aside as unnecessary between you and me."

"And you will be absent a whole year?"

"Probably, or a little more; for the boy ought to keep two sessions at least; and locomotion is not so easy to me as it is to Cardross. Yes, my dear, you will have to part with me--I mean I shall have to part with you--for a year. It is a long time in our short lives. I would not do it--give myself the pain of it--for any thing in this world except to make Helen happy."

"Thank you; I know that."

But Helen, full of her son and his prospects--her youth renewed in his youth, her life absorbed in his, seeming to stretch out to a future where there was no ending, knew not half of what she thanked him for.

She yielded to all the earl's plans; and after so many years of resistance, bowed her independent spirit to accept his bounty with humility of gratitude that was almost painful to both, until a few words of his led her to, and left her in the belief that he was doing what was agreeable to himself--that he really did enjoy the idea of a long sojourn at St. Andrew's; and, mother-like, when she was satisfied on this head, she began almost to envy him the blessing of her boy's constant society.

So she agreed to all his plans cheerfully, contentedly, as indeed she had good reason to be contented; thankfully accepted every thing, and never for a moment suspected that she was accepting a sacrifice. _

Read next: Chapter 17

Read previous: Chapter 15

Table of content of Noble Life


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book