A Noble Life | Page 2

of Calamity? In this case no one could have been more suited for his solemn office than Mr. Cardross. He went up to the Castle door, as he had done to that of many a cottage bearing the same solemn message of sudden death, to which there could be but one answer--"Thy will be done."
But the particulars of that terrible interview, in which he had to tell the countess what already her own eyes had witnessed--though they refused to believe the truth--the minister never repeated to any creature except his wife. And afterward, during the four weeks that Lady Cairnforth survived her husband, he was the only person, beyond her necessary attendants, who saw her until she died.
The day after her death he was suddenly summoned to the castle by Mr. Menteith, an Edinburg writer to the signet, and confidential agent, or factor, as the office called in Scotland, to the late earl.
"They'll be sending for you to baptize the child. It's early--but the pair bit thing may be delicate, and they may want it done at once, before Mr. Menteith returns to Edinburg."
"Maybe so, Helen; so do not expect me back till you see me."
Thus saying, the minister quitted his sunshiny manse garden, where he was working peacefully among his raspberry-bushes, with his wife looking on, and walked, in meditative mood, through the Cairnforth woods, now blue with hyacinths in their bosky shadows, and in every nook and corner starred with great clusters of yellow primroses, which in this part of the country grow profusely, even down to within a few feet of high-water mark, on the tidal shores of the lochs. Their large, round, smiling faces, so irresistibly suggestive of baby smiles at sight of them, and baby fingers clutching at them, touched the heart of the good minister, who had left two small creatures of his own--a "bit girlie" of five, and a two-year-old boy--playing on his grass-plot at home with some toys of the countess's giving: she had always been exceedingly kind to the Manse children.
He thought of her, lying dead; and then of her poor little motherless and fatherless baby, whom, if she had any consciousness in her death-hour, it must have been a sore pang to her to leave behind. And the tears gathered again and again in the good man's eyes, shutting out from his vision all the beauty of the spring.
He reached the grand Italian portico, built by some former earl with a taste for that style, and yet harmonizing well with the smooth lawn, bounded by a circle of magnificent trees, through which came glimpses of the glittering loch. The great doors used almost always to stand open, and the windows were rarely closed--the countess like sunshine and fresh air, but now all was shut up and silent, and not a soul was to be seen about the place.
Mr. Cardross sighed, and walked round to the other side of the castle, where was my lady's flower-garden, or what was to be made into one. Then he entered by French windows, from a terrace overlooking it, my lord's library, also incomplete. For the earl, who was by no means a bookish man, had only built that room since his marriage, to please his wife, whom perhaps he loved all the better that she was so exceedingly unlike himself. Now both were away--their short dream of married life ended, their plans and hopes crumbled into dust. As yet, no external changes had been made, the other solemn changes having come so suddenly. Gardeners still worked in the parterres, and masons and carpenters still, in a quiet and lazy manner, went on completing the beautiful room; but there was no one to order them--no one watched their work. Except for workmen, the place seemed so deserted that Mr. Cardross wandered through the house for some time before he found a single servant to direct him to the person of whom he was in search.
Mr. Menteith sat alone in a little room filled with guns and fishing rods, and ornamented with stag's heads, stuffed birds, and hunting relics of all sorts, which had been called, not too appropriately, the earl's "study." He was a little, dried-up man, about fifty years old, of sharp but not unkindly aspect. When the minister entered, he looked up from the mass of papers which he seemed to have been trying to reduce into some kind of order--apparently the late earl's private papers, which had been untouched since his death, for there was a sad and serious shadow over what otherwise have been rather a humorous face.
"Welcome, Mr. Cardross; I am indeed glad to see you. I took the liberty of sending for you, since you are the only person with whom I can consult--we can consult, I should say,