A Noble Life | Page 8

let
the world go on without him--as he felt it would, easily enough-- and
walked down to the Castle, where, for the first time these ten years,
windows were opened and doors unbarred, and the sweet light and
warm air of day let in upon those long-shut rooms, which seemed, in
their dumb, inanimate way, glad to be happy again--glad to be made of
use once more. Even the portraits of the late earl and countess--he in
his Highland dress, and she in her white satin and pearls--both so
young and bright, as they looked on the day they were married, seemed
to gaze back at each other from either side the long dining-room, as if
to say, rejoicing, "Our son is coming home."
"Have you seen the earl?" said Mr. Cardross to one of the new servants
who attended him round the rooms, listening respectfully to all the
remarks and suggestions as to furniture and the like which Mr.
Menteith had requested him to make. The minister was always
specially popular with servants and inferiors of every sort, for he
possessed, in a remarkable degree, that best key to their hearts, the
gentle dignity which never needs to assert a superiority that is at once
felt and acknowledged.
"The earl, sir? Na, na"--with a mysterious shake of the head-- "naebody
sees the earl. Some say--but I hae nae cause to think it mysel'--that he's
no a' there."
The minister was sufficiently familiar with that queer, but very
expressive Scotch phrase, "not all there," to pursue no farther inquiries.
But he sighed, and wished he had delayed a little before undertaking
the tutorship. However, the matter was settled now, and Mr. Cardross
was not the man ever to draw back from an agreement or shrink from a
promise.
"Whatever the poor child is--even if an idiot," thought he, "I will do my
best for him, for his father's and mother's sake."
And he paused several minutes before those bright and smiling portraits,
pondering on the mysterious dealings of the great Ruler of the universe

--how some are taken and some are left: those removed who seem most
happy and most needed; those left behind whom it would have
appeared, in our dim and short-sighted judgment, a mercy, both to
themselves and others, quietly to have taken away.
But one thing the minister did in consequence of these somewhat sad
and painful musings. On his return to the clachan--where, of course, the
news of the earl's coming home had long spread, and thrown the whole
country-side into a state of the greatest excitement--he gave orders, or
at least, advice--which was equivalent to orders, since everybody
obeyed him--that there should be no special rejoicings on the earl's
coming home; no bonfire on the hill-side, or triumphal arches across
the road, and at the ferry where the young earl would probably land--
where, ten years before, the late Earl of Cairnforth had been not landed,
but carried, stone-cold, with his dripping, and his dead hands still
clutching the weeds of the loch. The minister vividly recalled the sight,
and shuddered at it still.
"No, no," said he, in talking the matter over with some of his people,
whom he went among like a father among his children, true pastor of a
most loving flock, "no; we'll wait and see what the earl would like
before we make any show. That we are glad to see him he knows well
enough, or will very soon find out. And if he should arrive on such a
night as this"--looking round on the magnificent June sunset, coloring
the mountains at the head of the loch--"he will hardly need a brighter
welcome to a bonnier home."
But the earl did not arrive on a gorgeous evening like this, such as
come sometimes to the shores of Loch Beg, and make it glow into a
perfect paradise: he arrived in "saft" weather--in fact, on a pouring wet
Saturday night, and all the clachan saw of him was the outside of his
carriage, driving, with closed blinds, down the hill-side. He had taken a
long round, and had not crossed the ferry; and he was carried as fast as
possible through the dripping wood, reaching, just as darkness fell, the
Castle door.
Mr. Cardross, perhaps, should have been there to welcome the child--
his conscience rather smote him that he was not--but it was the

minister's unbroken habit of years to spend Saturday evening alone in
his study. And it might be that, with a certain timidity, inherent in his
character, he shrank from this first meeting, and wished to put off as
long as possible what must inevitably be awkward, and might be very
painful. So, in darkness and rain, unwelcomed save by his own servants,
most of whom even