A Noble Life

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

That is, it ultimately became so; but for a long time after the journey to London a shadow hung over it, which rarely quite passed away except in Helen's company. Nobody could be dreary for long beside Helen Cardross; and either through her companionship, or his own inherent strength of will, or both combined, the earl gradually recovered from the bitterness of lost hopes, whatsoever they had been, and became once more his own natural self, perhaps even more cheerful, since it was now not so much the gayety of a boy as the composed, equable serenity of a thoughtful man.

His education might be considered complete: it had advanced to the utmost limit to which Mr. Cardross could carry it; but the pupil insisted on retaining, nominally and pecuniarily, his position at the Manse.

Or else the two would spend hours—nay, days, shut up together in the Castle Library, the beautiful octagon room, with its painted ceiling, and its eight walls lined from floor to roof with empty shelves, to plan the filling of which was the delight of the minister's life, since, but for his poor parish and his large family, Mr. Cardross would have been a thorough bibliomaniac. Now, in a vicarious manner, the hobby of his youth reappeared, and at every cargo of books that arrived at the Castle his old eyes brightened—for he was growing to look really an old man now—and he would plunge among them with an ardor that sometimes made both the earl and Helen smile. But Helen's eyes were dim too, for she saw through all the tender cunning, and often watched Lord Cairnforth as he sat contentedly in his little chair, in the midst of a pile of books, examining, directing, and sympathizing, though doing nothing. Alas! nothing could he do. But it was one of the secrets which made these three lives so peaceful, that each could throw itself out of itself into that of another, and take thence, secondarily, the sunshine that was denied to its own.

Beyond the family at the Manse the earl had no acquaintance whatsoever, and seemed to desire none. His rank lifted him above the small proprietors who lived within visitable distance of the Castle: they never attempted to associate with him. Sometimes a stray caller appeared, prompted by curiosity, which Mrs. Campbell generally found ingenious reasons for leaving ungratified, and Lord Cairnforth's excessive shyness and dislike to appear before strangers did the rest. It is astonishing how little the world cares to cultivate those out of whom it can get nothing; and the small establishment at Cairnforth Castle, with its almost invisible head, soon ceased to be an object of interest to any body—at least to any body in that sphere of life where the earl would otherwise have moved.

Among his own tenantry, the small farmers along the shores of the two lochs which bounded the peninsula, his long minority and mysterious affliction made him personally almost unknown. They used to come twice a year, at WhitSunday and Martinmas, to pay their rents to Mr. Menteith; to inquire for my lord's health, and to drink in abundance of whisky; but the earl himself they never saw, and their feelings toward him were a mixture of reverence and awe.

It was different with the earl's immediate neighbors, the humble inhabitants of the clachan. These, during the last nine years, had gradually grown familiar, first with the little childish form, carried about tenderly in Malcolm's arms, and then with the muffled figure, scarcely less of a child to look at, which Malcolm, and sometimes Miss Cardross, drove about in a pony-chaise. At the kirk especially, though he was always carefully conveyed in first, and borne out last of all the congregation, his face—his sweet, kind, beautiful face was known to them all, and the children were always taught to doff their bonnets or pull their forelocks to the earl.

Beyond that, nobody knew any thing about him. His large property, accumulating every year, was entirely under the management of Mr. Menteith; he himself took no interest in it; and the way by which the former heirs of Cairnforth had used to make themselves popular from boyhood, by going among the tenantry, hunting, shooting, fishing, and boating, was impossible to this earl. His distant dependents hardly remembered his existence, and he took no heed of theirs, until a few months before he came of age, when one of these slight chances which often determine so much changed the current of affairs.

If was just before the "term." Mr. Menteith had been expected all day, but had not arrived, and the earl had taken a long drive with Helen and her father through the Cairnforth woods, where the wild daffodils were beginning to succeed the fading snowdrops, and the mavises had been heard to sing those few rich notes which belong especially to the twilights of early spring, and earnest of all the richness, and glory, and delight of the year. The little party seemed to feel it—that soft, dreamy sense of dawning spring, which stirs all the soul, especially in youth, with a vague looking forward to some pleasantness which never comes. They sat, silent and talking by turns, beside the not unwelcome fire, in a corner of the large library.

"We shall miss Alick a good deal this spring," said Helen, recurring to a subject of which the family heart was full, the departure of the eldest son to "begin the world" in Mr. Menteith's office in Edinburg. He was not a very clever lad, but he was sensible and steady, and blessed with that practical mother-wit which is often better than brains. The minister, though he had been bemoaning his boy's "little Latin and less Greek," and comparing Alick's learning very disadvantageously with that of the earl, to whom Mr. Cardross confided all his troubles, nevertheless seemed both proud and hopeful of his eldest son, the heir to his honest name, which Alick would now carry out into a far wider world than that of the poor minister of Cairnforth, and doubtless, in good time, transmit honorably to a third generation.

"Yes," added the father, when innumerable castles in the air had been built and rebuilt for Alick's future, "I'll not deny that my lad is a good lad. He is the hope of the house, and he knows it. It's little of worldly gear that he'll get for many a day, and he tells me he will have to work from morning till night; but he rather enjoys the prospect than not."