A Noble Life Part 25

She took her accustomed place by the earl's side, and plunged at once, in Helen's own way, into the business which had brought her hither.

"I am not come to beg or to borrow, do not think it--only to ask advice. Tell me, what am I to say to my boy?"

And again, the instant she mentioned her son's name, she gave way to tears. Yet all the while her friend saw that she was very hard, and bent upon being hard; that, had Cardross appeared before her at that minute, she would immediately have frozen up again into the stern mother whose confidence had been betrayed, whose principles infringed, and who, though loving her son with all the strength of her heart, could also punish him with all the power of her conscience, even though her heart was breaking with sorrow the while.

"I will give you the best advice I can. But, first, let me have his letter again."

Lord Cairnforth read it slowly over, Mrs. Bruce's eager eyes watching him, and then suffered her to take it from his helpless hands, and fold it up, tenderly, as mothers do.

"What do you think of it?"

"Exactly what I did this morning--that your boy has been very foolish, but not wicked. There is no attempt at deception or untruthfulness.

"No, thank G.o.d! Whatever else he is, my son is not a liar. I have prevented or conquered that."

"Yes, because you brought him up, as your father brought us up, to be afraid of nothing, to speak out our minds to him without fear of offending him, to stand in no dread of rousing his anger, but only of grieving his love. And so, you see, Helen, it is the same with your boy. He never attempts to deceive you. He tells out, point-blank, the most foolish things he has done--the most ridiculous expenses he has run into. He may be extravagant, but he is not untruthful. I have no doubt, if I sent this list to his trades-people, they would verify every halfpenny, and that this really is the end of the list. Not such a long list neither, if you consider. Below two hundred pounds for which you were going to sell my ring."

"Were going! I shall do it still."

"If you will; though it seems a pity to part with a gift of mine, when the sum is a mere nothing to me, with my large income, which, Helen, will one day be all yours."

Helen was silent--a little sorry and ashamed. The earl talked with her till he had succeeded in calming her and bringing her into her natural self again--able to see things in their right proportions, and take just views of all.

"Then you will trust me?" she said at last. "You think I may be depended upon to do nothing rashly when I go to Edinburg to-morrow?"

"My dear, I have no intention of letting you go."

"But some one must go. Something must be done, and I can not trust Alick to do it. My brother does not understand my boy," said she, returning to her restless, helpless manner. She, the helpful Helen, only weak in this one point--her only son.

"Something has been done. I have already sent for Cardross. He will be at the Castle to-morrow."

Helen started.

"At the Castle, I said, not the Manse. No, Helen, you shall not be compromised; you may be as severe as you like with your son. But he is my son too"--and a faint shade of color pa.s.sed over the earl's withered cheeks--"my adopted son, and it is time that he should know it."

"Do you mean to tell him--"

"I mean to tell him all my intentions concerning him."

"What! now?"

"Yes, now. It is the safest and most direct course, both for him, for you, and for me. I have been thinking over the matter all day, and can come to no other conclusion. Even for myself--if I may speak of myself--it is best. I do not wish to encroach upon his mother's rights--it is not likely I should," added the earl, with a somewhat sad smile; "still, it is hard that during the years, few or many, that I have to live, I, a childless man, should not enjoy a little of the comfort of a son."

Helen sat silent with averted face. It was all quite true, and yet--

"I will tell you, to make all clear, the position I wish Cardross to hold with regard to me--shall I?"

Mrs. Bruce a.s.sented.

"Into his mother's place he can never step; I do not desire it. You must still be, as you have always been, and I shall now publicly give out the fact, my immediate successor; and, except for a stated allowance, to be doubled when he marries, which I hope he will, and early, Cardross must still be dependent upon his mother during her lifetime. Afterward he inherits all. But there is one thing," he continued, seeing that Helen did not speak, "I should like: it would make me happy if, on his coming of age, he would change his name, or add mine to it--be Alexander Cardross Bruce Montgomerie, or simply Alexander Cardross Montgomerie. Which do you prefer?"

Helen meditated long. Many a change came and went over the widow's face --widowed long enough for time to have softened down all things, and made her remember only the young days--the days of a girl's first love. It might have been so, for she said at last, almost with a gasp,

"I wish my son to be Bruce-Montgomerie."

"Be it so."

After that Lord Cairnforth was long silent.

Helen resumed the conversation by asking if he did not think it dangerous, almost wrong, to tell the boy of this brilliant future immediately after his errors?

"No, not after errors confessed and forsaken. Remember, it was over very rags that the prodigal's father put upon him the purple robe. But our boy is not a prodigal, Helen. I know him well, and I have faith in him, and faith in human nature--especially Cardross nature." And the earl smiled. "Far deeper than any harshness will smite him the consciousness of being forgiven and trusted--of being expected to carry out in his future life all that was a-missing in two not particularly happy lives, his mother's--and mine."

Helen Bruce resisted no more. She could not. She was a wise woman-- a generous and loving-hearted woman; still, in that self-contained, solitary existence, which had been spent close beside her, yet into the mystery of which she had never penetrated, and never would penetrate, there was a nearness to heaven and heavenly things, and clearness of vision about earthly things which went far beyond her own. She could not quite comprehend it--she would never have thought of it herself --but she dimly felt that the earl's judgment was correct, and that, strange as his conduct might appear, he was acting after that large sense of rightness which implies righteousness; a course of action which the world so often ridicules and misconstrues, because the point of view is taken from an alt.i.tude not of this world, and the objects regarded there-from are things not visible, but invisible.

Cardross appeared next day--not at home, but at the Castle, and was closeted there for several hours with the earl before he ever saw his mother. When he did--and it was he who came to her, for she refused to take one step to go to him--he flung himself on his knees before her and sobbed in her lap--the great fellow of six feet high and twenty years old--sobbed and prayed for forgiveness with the humility of a child.

"Oh, mother, mother--and he has forgiven me too! To think what he has done for me--what he is about to do--me, who have had no father, or worse than none. Do you know, sometimes people in Edinburgh --the Menteiths, and so on--have taunted me cruelly about my father?"

"And what do you answer?" asked Helen, in a slow, cold voice.

"That he was my father, and that he was dead; and I bade them speak no more about him."

"That was right, my son."

Then they were silent till Cardross burst out again.

"It is wonderful--wonderful! I can hardly believe it yet--that we should never be poor nay more--you, mother, who have gone through so much, and I, who thought I should have to work hard all my days for both of us. And I will work!" cried the boy, as he tossed back his curls and lifted up to his mother a face that in brightness and energy was the very copy of her own, or what hers used to be. "I'll show you, and the earl too, how hard I can work--as hard as if for daily bread. I'll do every thing he wishes me--I'll be his right hand, as he says. I will make a name for myself and him too--mother, you know I am to bear his name?"

"Yes, my boy."

"And I am glad to bear it. I told him so. He shall be proud of me yet, and you too. Oh, mother, mother, I will never vex you again."

And once more his voice broke into sobs, and Helen's too, as she clasped him close, and felt that whatever G.o.d had taken away from her, He had given her as much--and more.

Mother and son--widowed mother and only son--there is something in the tie unlike all others in the world--not merely in its blessedness, but in its divine compensations.

Helen waited till her father had retired, which he often did quite early, for the days were growing too long for him, with whom every one of them was numbered; and he listened to the wonderful news which his grandson told him with the even smile of old age, which nothing now either grieves or surprises.

"You'll not be going to live at the Castle, though, not while I am alive, Helen?" was his first uneasy thought. But his daughter soon quieted it, and saw him to his bed, as she did every evening, bidding him good-night, and kissing his placid brow--placid as a child's-- just as if he had been her child instead of her father. Then she took her son's arm--such a stalwart arm now, and walked with him through the bright moonlight, clear as day, to Cairnforth Castle.

When they entered the library they found the earl sitting in his usual place, and engaged in his usual evening occupation, which he sometimes called "the hard labor of doing nothing;" for, though he was busy enough in the daytime with a young man he had as secretary--his faithful old friend, Mr. Mearns, having lately died--still, he generally spent his evenings alone. Malcolm lurked within call, in case he wanted any thing; but he rarely did. Often he would pa.s.s hours at a time sitting as now, with his feeble hands folded on his lap, his head bent, and his eyes closed, or else open and looking out straight before him-- calmly, but with an infinite yearning in them that would have seemed painful to those who did not know how peaceful his inmost nature was.

But at the first sound of his visitors' footsteps he turned round-- that is, he turned his little chair round--and welcomed them heartily and brightly.

A little ordinary talk ensued, in which Cardross scarcely joined. The young man was not himself at all--silent, abstracted; and there was an expression in his face which almost frightened his mother, so solemn was it, yet withal so exceedingly sweet.

The earl had been right in his conclusions; he, with his keen insight into character, had judged Cardross better than the boy's own mother would have done. Those brilliant prospects, that total change in his expected future, which might have dazzled a lower nature and sent it all astray, made this boy--Helen's boy, with Helen's nature strong in him, only the more sensible of his deficiencies as well as his responsibilities--humble, self-distrustful, and full of doubts and fears. Ten years seemed to have pa.s.sed over his head since morning, changing him from a boy into a sedate, thoughtful man.