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A Noble Life, a novel by Dinah M. Mulock Craik |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ During a whole year the Earl of Cairnforth and Mr. Bruce-Montgomery-- for, as soon as possible, Cardross legally assumed the name--resided at that fairest of ancient cities and pleasantest of Scotch Universities, St. Andrew's. A few of the older inhabitants may still remember the house the earl occupied there, the society with which he filled it, and the general mode of life carried on by himself and his adopted son. Some may recall --for indeed it was not easy to forget--the impression made in the good old town by the two new-comers when they first appeared in the quiet streets, along the Links and on the West Sands--every where that the little carriage could be drawn. A strange contrast they were --the small figure in the pony-chair, and the tall young man walking beside it in all the vigor, grace, and activity of his blooming youth. Two companions pathetically unlike, and yet always seen together, and evidently associating with one another from pure love. They lived for some time in considerable seclusion, for the earl's rank and wealth at first acted as a bar to much seeking of his acquaintance among the proud and poor University professors and old-fashioned inhabitants of the city; and Cardross, being the senior of most of the college lads, did not cultivate them much. By degrees, however, he became well known--not as a hard student--that was not his line --he never took any high college honors; but he was the best golfer, the most dashing rider, the boldest swimmer--he saved more than one life on that dangerous shore; and, before the session was half over, he was the most popular youth in the whole University. But he would leave every thing, or give up every thing--both his studies and his pleasures--to sit, patient as a girl, beside the earl's chair, or to follow it--often guiding it himself--up and down St. Andrews' streets; never heeding who looked at him, or what comments were made-- as they were sure to be made--upon him, until what was at first so strange and touching a sight grew at last familiar to the whole town. Of course, very soon all the circumstances of the case came out, probably with many imaginary additions, though the latter never reached the ears of the two concerned. Still, the tale was romantic and pathetic enough to make the earl and his young heir objects of marked interest, and welcome guests in the friendly hospitalities of the place, which hospitalities were gladly requited, for Lord Cairnforth still keenly enjoyed society, and Cardross was at an age when all pleasure is attractive. People said sometimes, What a lucky fellow was Mr. Bruce-Montgomerie! But they also said--as no one could help seeing and saying--that very few fathers were blessed with a son half so attentive and devoted as this young man was to the Earl of Cairnforth. And meantime Helen Bruce lived quietly at the Manse, devoting herself to the care of her father, who still lingered on, feeble in body, though retaining most of his faculties, as though death were unwilling to end a life which had so much of peace and enjoyment of it to the very last. When the session was over, Cardross went home to see his mother and grandfather, and on his return Lord Cairnforth listened eagerly to all the accounts of Cairnforth, and especially of all that Mrs. Bruce was doing there; she, as the person most closely acquainted with the earl's affairs, having been constituted regent in his absence. "She's a wonderful woman--my mother," said Cardross, with great admiration. "She has the sense of a man, and the tact of a woman. She is doing every thing about the estate almost as cleverly as you would do it yourself." "Is she? It is good practice for her," said the earl. "She will need it soon." Cardross looked at him. He had never till then noticed, what other people began to notice, how exceedingly old the earl now looked, his small, delicate features withering up almost like those of an elderly man, though he was not much past forty. "You don't, mean--oh no, not that! You must not be thinking of that. My mother's rule at Cairnforth is a long way off yet." And--big fellow as he was--the lad's eyes filled with tears. After that day he refused all holiday excursions in which Lord Cairnforth could not accompany him. It was only by great persuasion that he agreed to go for a week to Edinburg, to revisit his old haunts there, to look on the ugly fields where he had sown his wild oats, and prove to even respectable and incredulous Uncle Alick that there was no fear of their ever sprouting up again. Also, Lord Cairnforth took the opportunity to introduce his cousin into his own set of Edinburg friends, to familiarize the young man with the society in which he must shortly take his place, and to hear from them, what he so warmly believed himself, that Cardross was fitted to be heir to any property in all Scotland. "What a pity," some added, "that he could not be heir to the earldom also!" "No," said others, "better that 'the wee earl' (as old-fashioned folk still sometimes called him) should be the last Earl of Cairnforth." With the exception of those two visits, during a whole twelvemonth the earl and his adopted son were scarcely parted for a single day. Years afterward, Cardross loved to relate, first to his mother, and then to his children, sometimes with laughter, and again with scarcely repressed tears, may an anecdote of the life they two led together at St. Andrew's --a real student life, yet filled at times with the gayest amusements. For the earl loved gayety--actual mirth; sometimes he and Cardross were as full of jests and pranks as two children, and at other times they held long conversations upon all manner of grave and earnest topics, like equal friends. It was the sort of companionship, free and tender, cheerful and bright, yet with all the influence of the elder over the younger, which, occurring to a young man of Cardross's age and temperament, usually determines his character for life. Thus, day by day, Helen's son developed and matured, becoming more and more a thorough Cardross, sound to the core, and yet polished outside in a manner which had not been the lot of any of the earlier generation, save the minister. Also, he had a certain winning way with him--a power of suiting himself to every body, and pleasing every body-- which even his mother, who only pleased those she loved or those that loved her, had never possessed. "It's his father's way he has, ye ken," Malcolm would say--Malcolm, who, after a season of passing jealousy, had for years succumbed wholly to his admiration of "Miss Helen's bairn." "But it's the only bit o' the Bruces that the lad's gotten in him, thank the Lord!" Though the earl did not say openly "thank the Lord," still he, too, recognized with a solemn joy that the qualities he and Helen dreaded had either not been inherited by Captain Bruce's son, or else timely care had rooted them out. And as he gradually relaxed his watch over the young man, and left him more and more to his own guidance, Lord Cairnforth, sitting alone in his house at St. Andrew's--almost as much alone as he used to sit in the Castle library--would think, with a strange consolation, that this year's heavy sacrifice had not been in vain. Once Cardross, coming in from a long golfing match, broke upon one of these meditative fits, and was a little surprised to find that the earl did not rouse himself out of it quite so readily as was his wont; also that the endless college stories, which he always liked so much to listen to, fell rather blank, and did not meet Lord Cairnforth's hearty laugh, as gay as that of a young fellow could share and sympathize in them all. "You are not well to-day," suddenly said the lad. "What have you been doing?" "My usual work--nothing." "But you have been thinking. What about?" cried Cardross, with the affectionate persistency of one who knew himself a favorite, and looking up in the earl's face with his bright, fond eyes--Helen's very eyes. "I was thinking of your mother, my boy. You know it is a whole year since I have seen your mother." "So she said in her last letter, and wondered when you intended coming home, because she misses you more and more every day." "You, she means, Carr." "No, yourself. I know my mother wishes you would come home." "Does she? And so do I. But I should have to leave you alone, my boy; for if once I make the effort, and return to Cairnforth, I know I shall never quit it more." He spoke earnestly--more so than the occasion seemed to need, and there was a weary look in his eyes which struck his companion. "Are you afraid to leave me alone, Lord Cairnforth?" asked Cardross, sadly. "No." And again, as if he had not answered strongly enough, he repeated, "My dear boy, no!" "Thank you. You never said it, but I knew. You came here for my sake, to take charge of me. You made me happy--you never blamed me--you neither watched me or domineered over me--still, I knew. Oh, how good you have been!" Lord Cairnforth did not speak for some time, and then he said, gravely, "However things were at first, you must feel, my boy, that I trust you now entirely, and that you and I are thorough friends--equal friends." "Not equal. On, never in my whole life shall I be half so good as you! But I'll try hard to be as good as I can. And I shall be always beside you. Remember your promise." This was, that after he came of age, and ended his university career, instead of taking "the grand tour," like most young heirs of the period, Cardross should settle down at home, in the character of of Lord Cairnforth's private secretary--always at hand, and ready in every possible way to lighten the burden of business which, even as a young man, the earl had found heavy enough, and as an old man he would be unable to bear. "I shall never be clever, I know that," pleaded the lad, who was learning a touching humility, "but I may be useful; and oh! if you would but use me, in any thing or every thing, I'd work day and night for you --I would indeed!" "I know you would, my son" (earl sometimes called him "my son" when they were by themselves), "and so you shall." That evening Lord Cairnforth dictated to Helen, by her boy's hand, one of his rare letters, telling her that he and Cardross would return home in time for the latter's birthday, which would be in a month from now, and which he wished kept with all the honors customary to the coming of age of an heir of Cairnforth. "Heir of Cairnforth!" The lad started, and stopped writing. "It must be so, my son; I wish it. After your mother, you are my heir, and I shall honor you as such; afterward you will return here alone, and stay till the session is over; then come back, and live with me at the Castle, and fit yourself in every way to become--what I can now wholly trust you to be--the future master of Cairnforth." And so, as soon as the earl's letter reached the peninsula, the rejoicings began. The tenantry knew well enough who the earl had fixed upon to come after him, but his was his first public acknowledgment of the fact. Helen's position, as heiress presumptive, was regarded as merely nominal; it was her son, the fine young fellow whom every body knew from his babyhood, toward whom the loyalty of the little community blazed up in a height of feudal devotion that was touching to see. The warm Scotch heart--all the warmer, perhaps, for a certain narrowness and clannishness, which in its pride would probably, nay, certainly, have shut itself up against a stranger or an inferior--opened freely to "Miss Helen's" son and the minister's grandson, a young man known to all and approved of by all. So the festivity was planned to be just the earl's coming of age over again, with the difference between June and December, which removed the feasting-place from the lawn to the great kitchen of the Castle, and caused bonfires on the hill-tops to be a very doubtful mode of jubilation. The old folk--young then--who remembered the bright summer festival of twenty-four years ago told many a tale of that day, and how the "puir wee earl" came forward in his little chair and made his brief speech, every word and every promise of which his after life had so faithfully fulfilled. "The heir's a wise-like lad, and a braw lad," said the old folks of the clachan, patronizingly. "He's no that ill the noo, and he'll aiblins grow the better, ye ken; but naibody that comes after will be like him. We'll ne'er see anither Earl o' Cairnforth." The same words which Mr. Menteith and the rest had said when the earl was born, but with what a different meaning! Lord Cairnforth came back among his own people amid a transport of welcome. Though he had been long away, Mrs. Bruce and other assistants had carried out his plans and orders so successfully that the estate had not suffered for his absence. In the whole extent of it was now little or no poverty; none like that which, in his youth, had startled Lord Cairnforth into activity upon hearing the story of the old shepherd of Loch Mhor. There was plenty of work, and hands to do it, along the shores of both lochs; new farms had sprung up, and new roads been made; churches and schools were built as occasion required; and though the sheep had been driven a little higher up the mountains, and the deer and grouse fled farther back into the inland moors, still Cairnforth village was a lovely spot, inhabited by a contented community. Civilization could bring to it no evils that were not counteracted by two strong influences--(stronger than any one can conceive who does not understand the peculiarities almost feudal in their simplicity, of country parish life in Scotland)--a minister like Mr. Cardross, and a resident proprietor like the Earl of Cairnforth. The earl arrived a few days before the festival day, and spent the time in going over his whole property from one end to the other. He took Mrs. Bruce with him. "I can't want you for a day now, Helen," said he, and made her sit beside him in his carriage, which, by dint of various modern appliances, he could now travel in far easier than he used to do, or else asked her to drive him in the old familiar pony-chaise along the old familiar hill-side roads, whence you look down on ether loch-- sometimes on both--lying like a sheet of silver below. Man a drive they took every day, the weather being still and clam, as it often is at Cairnforth, by fits and snatches, all winter through. "I think there never was such a place as this place," the earl would often say, when he stopped at particular points of view, and gazed his fill on every well-known outline of the hills and curve of the lochs, generally ending with a smiling look on the face beside him, equally familiar, which had watched all these things with him for more than thirty years. "Helen, I have had a happy life, or it seems so, looking back upon it. Remember, I said this, and let no one ever say the contrary." And in all the houses they visited--farm, cottage, or bothie-- every body noticed how exceedingly happy the earl looked, how cheerfully he spoke, and how full of interest he was in every thing around him. "His lordship may live to be an auld man yet," said some one to Malcolm, and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else. The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord Cairnforth's coming home, but he did not seem to feel it. He felt nothing very much now except pleasure in the sunshine and the fire, in looking at the outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching the bright faces around him. He was made to understand what a grand festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants' feast in the kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the hall--the grand old dining-room--which was arranged exactly as it had been on the earl's coming of age. However, there was a difference. Then the board was almost empty, now it was quite full. With a carefulness that at the time Helen almost wondered at, the earl collected about him that day the most brilliant gathering he could invite from all the country round--people of family, rank, and wealth--above all, people of worth; who, either by inherited position, or that high character which is the best possession of all, could confer honor by their presence, and who, since "a man is known by his friends," would be suitable and creditable friends to a young man just entering the world. And before all these, with Helen sitting as mistress at the foot of the table, and Helen's father at his right hand, the Earl of Cairnforth introduced, in a few simple words, his chosen heir. "Deliberately chosen," he added; "not merely as being my cousin and my nearest of kin, but because he is his mother's son, and Mr. Cardross's grandson, and worthy of them both--also because, for his own sake, I respect him, and I love him. I give you the health of Alexander Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie." And then they all wished the young man joy, and the dining-hall of Cairnforth Castle rang with hearty cheers for Mr. Bruce-Montgomerie. No more speeches were made, for it was noticed that Lord Cairnforth looked excessively wearied; but he kept his place to the last. Of the many brilliant circles that he had entertained at his hospitable board, none were ever more brilliant than this; none gayer, with the genial, wholesome gayety which the earl, of whom it might truly be said, "A merrier man, never spent an hour's talk withal," knew so well how to scatter around him. By what magic he did this, no one ever quite found out; but it was done, and especially so on this night of all nights, when, after his long absence, he came back to his own ancestral home, and appeared again among his own neighbors and friends. They long remembered it--and him. At length the last carriage rolled away, and shortly afterward the wind began suddenly to rise and howl wildly round the Castle. There came on one of those wild winter-storms, common enough in these regions-- brief, but fierce while they last. "You can not go home," said the earl to Mrs. Bruce, who remained with him, the minister having departed with his son Duncan early in the evening. "Stay here till to-morrow. Cardross, persuade your mother. You never yet spent a night under my roof. Helen, will you do it his once? I shall never ask you again." There was an earnest entreaty in his manner which Helen could not resist; and hardly knowing why she did it, she consented. Her son went off to his bed, fairly worn out with pleasurable excitement, and she staid with Lord Cairnforth, as he seemed to wish, for another half hour. They sat by the library fire, listening to the rain beating and the wind howling--not continuously, but coming and going in frantic blasts, which seemed like the voices of living creatures borne on its wings. "Do you mind, Helen, it was just such a night as this when Mr. Menteith died, before I went to Edinburg? The sort of wind that, they say, is always sent to call away souls. I know not why it is, or why there should be any connection between things material and immaterial, comprehensible and wholly incomprehensible, but I often sit here and fancy I should like my soul to be called away in just such a tempest as this--to be set free,
As the earl spoke, his whole face, withered and worn as it was, lighted up and glowed, Helen thought, almost like what one could imagine a disembodied soul. She answered nothing, for she could find nothing to say. Her quiet, simple faith was almost frightened at the passionate intensity of his, and the nearness with which he seemed to realize the unseen world. "I wonder," he said again--"I sometimes sit for hours wondering-- what the other life is like--the life of which we know nothing, yet which may be so near to us all. I often find myself planning about it in a wild, vague way, what I am to do in it--what God will permit me to do--and to be. Surely something more than He ever permitted here." "I believe that," said Helen. And after her habit of bringing all things to the one test and the one teaching, she reminded him of the parable of the talents: "I think," she added, "that you will be one of those whom, in requital for having made the most of all his gifts here, He will make 'ruler over ten cities' at least, if he is a just God." "He is a just God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that," replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last refuge of sorrow--the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the firmest faith--"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.'" When Helen rose to retire, which was not till midnight--for the earl seemed unwilling to let her go, saying it was so long since they had had a quiet talk together--he asked her earnestly if she were content about her son. "Perfectly content. Not merely content, but happy--happier than I once thought it possible to be in this world. And it is you who have done it all--you who have made my boy what he is. But he will reward you--I know he will. Henceforward he will be as much your son as mine." "I hope so. And now good-night, my dear." "Good-night--God bless you." Mrs. Bruce knelt down beside the chair, and touched with her lips the poor, useless hands. "Helen," said the earl as she rose, "kiss me--just once--as I remember your doing when I was a boy--a poor, lonely, miserable boy." She kissed him very tenderly, then went away and left him sitting there in his little chair, opposite the fire, alone in the large, splendid, empty room.
She was dressing herself, full of quiet and happy thoughts, admiring the rosy winter sunrise, and planning all she meant to do that day, when she was startled by Mrs. Campbell, who came suddenly into the room with a face as white and rigid as marble. "He's awa'," she said, or rather whispered. "Who's is away?" shrieked Helen, thinking at once of her father. "Whisht!" said the old nurse, catching hold of Mrs. Bruce as she was rushing from the room, and speaking beneath her breath; "wisht! My lord's deid; but we'll no greet; I canna greet. He's gane awa' hame." No, it was not the old man who was called. Mr. Cardross lived several years after then--lived to be nearly ninety. It was the far younger life--young, and yet how old in suffering!--which had thus suddenly and unexpectedly come to an end. The earl was found dead in his bed, in his customary attitude of repose, just as Malcolm always placed him, and left him till the morning. His eyes were wide open, so that he could not have died in his sleep. But how, at what hour, or in what manner he had died--whether the summons had been slow or sudden, whether he had tried to call assistance and failed, or whether, calling no one and troubling no one, his fearless soul had passed, and chosen to pass thus solitary unto its God, none ever knew or ever could know, and it was all the same now. He died as he had lived, quite alone. But it did not seem to have been a painful death, for the expression of his features was peaceful, and they had already settled down into that mysteriously beautiful death-smile which is never seen on any human face but once. Helen stood and looked down upon it--the dear familiar face, now, in the grandeur of death, suddenly grown strange. She thought of what hey had been talking about last night concerning the world to come. Now he knew it all. She did not "greet;" she could not. In spite of its outward incompleteness, it had been a noble life--an almost perfect life; and now it was ended. He had had his desire; his poor helpless body cumbered him no more--he was "away."
And so, laid beside his father and mother, they left him to his rest. According to his own wish, his grave bears this inscription, carved upon a plain upright stone, which--also by his particular request-- stands facing the Manse windows:
THE LAST EARL OF CAIRNFORTH, Died---- Aged 43 Years.
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