A Noble Life

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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.