A minute more, and the carriage stopped at the wicket-gate of the Manse garden.
There stood the minister, with his white locks bared, and his whole figure trembling with agitation, but still himself—stronger and better than he had been for many months.
"Papa! papa!" And Helen, his own Helen, was in his arms.
"Drive on," said Lord Cairnforth, hurriedly; "Malcolm, we will go straight to the Castle now."
And so, no one heeding him—they were too happy to notice any thing beyond themselves—the earl passed on, with a strange smile, not of this world at all, upon his quiet face, and returned to his own stately and solitary home.
Chapter 14
Good Mrs. Campbell had guessed truly that from this time forward Helen Bruce would be only a mother. Either she was one of those women in whom the maternal element predominates—who seem born to take care of other people and rarely to be taken care of themselves—or else her cruel experience of married life had forever blighted in her all wifely emotions—even wifely regrets. She was grave, sad, silent, for many months during her early term of widowhood, but she made no pretense of extravagant sorrow, and, except under the rarest and most necessary circumstances, she never even named her husband. Nothing did she betray about him, or her personal relations with him, even to her nearest and dearest friends. He had passed away, leaving no more enduring memory than the tomb-stone which Lord Cairnforth had erected in Grayfriars' church-yard.
—-Except his child, of whom it was the mother's undisguised delight that, outwardly and inwardly, the little fellow appeared to be wholly a Cardross. With his relatives on the father's side, after the one formal letter which she had requested should be written to Colonel Bruce announcing Captain Bruce's death, Helen evidently wished to keep up no acquaintance whatever—nay, more than wished; she was determined it should be so—with that quiet, resolute determination which was sometimes seen in every feature of her strong Scotch face, once so girlish, but it bore tokens of what she had gone through—of a battle from which no woman ever comes out unwounded or unscarred.
But, as before said, she was a mother, and wholly a mother, which blessed fact healed the young widow's heart better and sooner than any thing else could have done. Besides, in her case, there was no suspense, no conflict of duties—all her duties were done. Had they lasted after her child's birth the struggle might have been too hard; for mothers have responsibilities as well as wives, and when these conflict, as they do sometimes, God help her who has to choose between them! But Helen was saved this misfortune. Providence had taken her destiny out of her own hands, and here she was, free as Helen Cardross of old, in exactly the same position, and going through the same simple round of daily cares and daily avocations which she had done as the minister's active and helpful daughter.
For as nothing else but the minister's daughter would she, for the present, be recognized at Cairnforth. Lord Cairnforth's intentions toward herself or her son she insisted on keeping wholly secret, except, of course, as regarded that dear and good father.