A Noble Life Part 13

"Yes. Should you like to be very rich, Helen?" watching her with an amused look.

Helen shook her head and laughed. "Oh, it's no use asking me the question, for I shall never have the chance of being rich."

"You can not say; you might marry, for instance."

"That is not likely. Papa could never do without me; besides, as the folk say, I'm 'no bonnie, ye ken.' But," speaking more seriously, "indeed, I never think of marrying. If it is to be it will be; if not, I am quite happy as I am. And for money, can I not always come to you whenever I want it? You supply me endlessly for my poor people. And, as Captain Bruce was saying to papa the other night, you are a perfect mine of gold--and of generosity."

"Helen," Lord Cairnforth said, after he had sat thinking a while, "I wanted to consult you about Captain Bruce. How do you like him? That is, do you still continue to like him, for I know you did at first?"

"And I do still. I feel so very sorry for him."

"Only, my dear"--Lord Cairnforth sometimes called her "my dear," and spoke to her with a tender, superior wisdom--"one's link to one's friends ought to be a little stronger than being sorry for them; one ought to respect them. One must respect them before one can trust them very much--with one's property, for instance."

"Do you mean," said straightforward Helen, "that you have any thoughts of making Captain Bruce your heir?"

"No, certainly not; but I have grave doubts whether I ought not to remember him in my will, only I wished to see his health re-established first, since, had he continued as delicate as when he came, he might not even have outlived me."

"How calmly you talk of all this," said Helen, with a little s.h.i.+ver.

She, full of life and health, could hardly realize the feeling of one who stood always on the brink of another world, and looking to that world only for real health--real life.

"I think of it calmly, and therefore speak calmly. But, dear Helen, I will not grieve you to-day. There is plenty of time, and all is safe, whatever happens. I can trust my successor to do rightly. As for my cousin, I will try him a little longer, lest he prove

"'A little more than kin, and less than kind.'"

"There seems no likelihood of that. He always speaks in the warmest manner of you whenever he comes to the Manse; that is what makes me like him, I fancy; and also, because I would always believe the best of people until I found out to the contrary. Life would not be worth having if we were continually suspecting every body--believing every body bad till we had found them out to be good. If so, with many, I fear we should never find the good out at all. That is--I can't put it cleverly, like you, but I know what I mean."

Lord Cairnforth smiled. "So do I, Helen, which is quite enough for us two. We will talk this over some other time; and meanwhile"--he looked at her earnestly and spoke with meaning--"if ever you have an opportunity of being kind to Captain Bruce, remember he is my next of kin, and I wish it."

"Certainly," answered Helen. "But I am never likely to have the chance of doing any kindness to such a very fine gentleman."

Lord Cairnforth smiled to himself once more, and let the conversation end; afterward--long afterward, he recalled it, and thought with a strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal; nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face--not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true--with the sun s.h.i.+ning on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears--oceans of bitterness--that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite faded out of Helen's eyes.

"Ay," Lord Cairnforth said to himself, when she had gone away, and he was left alone in that helpless solitude which, being the inevitable necessity, had grown into the familiar habit of his life, "ay, it is all right. No harm could come--there would be nothing neglected--even were I to die to-morrow."

That "dying to-morrow," which might happen to any one of us, how few really recognize it and prepare for it! Not in the ordinary religious sense of "preparation for death"--often a most irreligious thing --a frantic attempt of sinning and terror-stricken humanity to strike a balance-sheet with heaven, just leaving a sufficient portion on the credit side--but preparation in the ordinary worldly meaning-- keeping one's affairs straight and clear, that no one may be perplexed therewith afterward; forgiving and asking forgiveness of offenses; removing evil done, and delaying not for a day any good that it is possible to do.

It was a strange thing; but, as after his death it was discovered, the true secret of the wonderful calmness and sweetness which, year by year, deepened more and more in Lord Cairnforth's character, ripening it to a perfectness in which those who only saw the outside of his could hardly believe, consisted in this ever-abiding thought--that he might die to-morrow. Existence was to him such a mere twilight, dim, imperfect, and sad, that he never rested in it, but lived every day, as it were, in prospect of the eternal dawn.

Chapter 9

This summer, which, as it glided away, Lord Cairnforth often declared to be the happiest of his life, ended by bringing him the first heavy affliction--external affliction--which his life had ever known.

Suddenly, in the midst of the late-earned rest of a very toilsome career, died Mr. Menteith, the earl's long-faithful friend, who had been almost as good to him as a father. He felt it sorely; the more so, because, though his own frail life seemed always under the imminent shadow of death, death had never touched him before as regarded other people. He had lived, as we all unconsciously do, till the great enemy smites us, feeling as if, whatever might be the case with himself, those whom he loved could never die. This grief was something quite new to him, and it struck him hard.

The tidings came on a gloomy day in late October, the season when Cairnforth is least beautiful; for the thick woods about it make the always damp atmosphere heavy with "the moist, rich smell of the rotting leaves," and the roads lying deep in mud, and the low sh.o.r.e hung with constant mists, give a general impression of dreariness. The far-away hills vanish entirely for days together, and the loch itself takes a leaden hue, as if it never could be blue again. You can hardly believe that the sun will ever again s.h.i.+ne out upon it; the white waves rise, the mountains reappear, and the whole scene grows clear and lovely, as life does sometimes if we have only patience to endure through the weary winter until spring.

But for the good man, John Menteith, his springs and winter were alike ended; he was gathered to his fathers, and his late ward mourned him bitterly.

Mr. Cardross and Helen, coming up to the Castle as soon as the news reached them, found Lord Cairnforth in a state of depression such as they had never before witnessed in him. One of the things which seemed to affect him most painfully, as small things sometimes do in the midst of deepest grief, was that he could not attend Mr. Menteith's funeral.

"Every other man," said he, sadly, "every other man can follow his dear friends and kindred to the grave, can give them respect in death as he has given them love and help during life--I can do neither. I can help no one--be of use to no one. I am a mere c.u.mberer of the ground. It would be better if I were away."

"Hus.h.!.+ Do not dare to say that," answered Mr. Cardross. And he sent the rest away, even Helen, and sat down beside his old pupil, not merely as a friend, but as a minister--in the deepest meaning of the word, even as it was first used of Him who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."

Helen's father was not a demonstrative man under ordinary circ.u.mstances; he was too much absorbed in his books, and in a sort of languid indifference to worldly matters, which had long hung over him, more or less, ever since his wife's death; but, when occasion arose, he could rise equal to it; and he was one of those comforters who knew the way through the valley of affliction by the marks which their own feet have trod.

He and the earl spent a whole hour alone together. Afterward, when sorrow, compared to which the present grief was calm and sacred, fell upon them both, they remembered this day, and were not afraid to open their wounded hearts to one another.

At last Mr. Cardross came out of the library, and told Helen that Lord Cairnforth wanted to speak to her.

"He wishes to have your opinion, as well as my own, about a journey he is projecting to Edinburg, and some business matters which he desires to arrange there. I think he would have like to see Captain Bruce too.

Where is he?"

The captain had found this atmosphere of sorrow a little too overpowering, and had disappeared for a long ride; so Miss Cardross had been sitting alone all the time.

"Your father has been persuading me, Helen," said the earl, when she came in, "that I am not quite so useless in the world as I imagined. He says he has reason to believe, from things Mr. Menteith let fall, that my dear old friend's widow is not very well provided for, and she and her children will have a hard battle even now. Mr. Cardross thinks I can help her very materially, in one way especially. You know I have made my will?"

"Yes," replied unconscious Helen, "you told me so."

"Mr. Menteith drew it up the last time he was here. How little we thought it would be really the last time! Ah! Helen, if we could only look forward!"

"It is best not," said Helen, earnestly.

"Well, my will is made. And though in it I left nothing to Mr. Menteith himself, seeing that such a return of his kindness would be very unwelcome, I insisted doing what was equivalent--bequeathing a thousand pounds to each of his children. Was I right in that? You do not object"?

"Most a.s.suredly not," answered Helen, though a little surprised at the question. Still, she was so long accustomed to be consulted by the earl, and to give her opinion frankly and freely on all points, that the surprise was only momentary.

"And, by the way, I mean to leave the same sum--one thousand pounds --to my cousin, Captain Bruce. Remember that, Helen; remember it particularly, will you? In case any thing should happen before I have time to add this to my will. But to the Menteiths. Your father thinks, and I agree with him, that the money I design for them will be far better spent now, or some portion of it, in helping these fatherless children on in the world, than in keeping them waiting for my death, which may not happen for years. What do you think?"

Helen agreed heartily. It would cause a certain diminution of yearly income, but then the earl had far more than enough for his own wants, and if not spent thus, the sum would certainly have been expended by him some other form of benevolence. She said as much.

"Possibly it might. What else should I do with it?" was Lord Cairnforth's answer. "But, in order to get at the money, and alter my will, so that in no case should this sum be paid twice over, to the injury of my heir--I must take care of my heir," and he slightly smiled, "I ought to go at once to Edinburg. Shall I?"

Helen hesitated. The earl's last journey had been so unpropitious-- he had taken so long a time to recover from it--that she had earnestly hoped he would never attempt another. She expressed this as delicately as she could.

"No, I never would have attempted it for myself. Change is only pain and weariness to me. I have no wish to leave dear, familiar Cairnforth till I leave it for--the place where my good old friend is now. And sometimes, Helen, I fancy the hills of Paradise will not be very unlike the hills about our loch. You would think of me far away, when you were looking at them sometimes?"

Helen fixed her tender eyes upon him--"It is quite as likely that you may have to think of me thus, for I may go first; I am the elder of us two. But all that is in G.o.d's hands alone. About Edinburg now. When should you start?"

"At once, I think; though, with my slow traveling, I should not be in time for the funeral; and even if I were, I could not attend it without giving much trouble to other people. But, as your father has shown me, the funeral does not signify. The great matter is to be of use to Mrs.

Menteith and the children in the way I explained. Have I your consent, my dear!"

For an answer, Helen pointed to a few lines in a Bible which lay open on the library table: no doubt her father had been reading out of it, for it was open at that portion which seems to have plumbed the depth of all human anguish--the Book of Job. She repeated the verses:

"'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me;