A Noble Life. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
of cotton wool.
Mrs. Campbell was a widow of only a month, and her mistress, to whom she had been much attached, lay dead in the next room, yet she had still a few tears left, and they were dropping like rain over her mistress's child.
No wonder. It lay on her lap, the smallest, saddest specimen of infantile deformity. It had a large head—larger than most infants have—but its body was thin, elfish, and distorted, every joint and limb being twisted in some way or other. You could not say that any portion of the child was natural or perfect except the head and face. Whether it had the power of motion or not seemed doubtful; at any rate, it made no attempt to move, except feebly turning its head from side to side. It lay, with its large eyes wide open, and at last opened its poor little mouth also, and uttered a loud pathetic wail.
"It greets, doctor, ye hear," said the nurse, eagerly; "'deed, an' it greets fine, whiles."
"A good sign," observed Dr. Hamilton. "Perhaps it may live after all, though one scarcely knows whether to desire it."
"I'll gar it live, doctor," cried Janet, as she rocked and patted it, and at last managed to lay it to her motherly breast; "I'll gar it live, ye'll see! That is God willing."
"It could not live, it could never have lived at all, if He were not willing," said the minister, reverently. And then, after a long pause, during which he and the two other gentlemen stood watching, with sad pitying looks, the unfortunate child, he added, so quietly and naturally that, though they might have thought it odd, they could hardly have thought it out of place or hypocritical, "Let us pray."
It was a habit, long familiar to this good Presbyterian minister, who went in and out among his parishioners as their pastor and teacher, consoler and guide. Many a time, in many a cottage, had he knelt down, just as he did here, in the midst of deep affliction, and said a few simple words, as from children to a father—the Father of all men. And the beginning and end of his prayer was, now as always, the expression and experience of his own entire faith—"Thy will be done."
"But what ought we to do?" said the Edinburg writer, when, having quitted, not unmoved, the melancholy nursery, he led the way to the scarcely less dreary dining-room, where the two handsome, bright-looking portraits of the late earl and countess still smiled down from the wall—giving Mr. Cardross a start, and making him recall, as if the intervening six weeks had been all a dream, the last day he and Mr. Menteith dined together at that hospitable table. They stole a look at one another, but, with true Scotch reticence, neither exchanged a word. Yet perhaps each respected the other the more, both for the feeling and for its instant repression.
"Whatever we decide to do, ought to be decided now," said Dr. Hamilton, "for I must be in Edinburg tomorrow. And, besides, it is a case in which no medical skill is of much avail, if any; Nature must struggle through—or yield, which I can not help thinking would be the best ending. In Sparta, now, this poor child would have been exposed on Mount—what was the place? to be saved by any opportune death from the still greater misfortune of living."
"But that would have been murder—sheer murder," earnestly replied the minister. "And we are not Spartans, but Christians, to whom the body is not every thing, and who believe that God can work out His wonderful will, if He chooses, through the meanest means—through the saddest tragedies and direst misfortunes. In one sense, Dr. Hamilton, there is no such thing as evil—that is, there is no actual evil in the world except sin."
"There is plenty of that, alas!" said Mr. Menteith. "But as to the child, I wished you to see it—both of you together—if only to bear evidence as to its present condition. For the late earl, in his will, executed, by a most providential chance, the last time I was here, appointed me sole guardian and trustee to a possible widow or child. On me, therefore, depends the charge of this poor infant—the sole bar between those penniless, grasping, altogether discreditable Bruces, and the large property of Cairnforth. You see my position, gentlemen?"
It was not an easy one, and no wonder the honest man looked much troubled.
"I need not say that I never sought it—never thought it possible it
would really fall to my lot; but it has fallen, and I must discharge it
to the best of my ability. You see what the earl is—born alive,
anyhow—though we can hardly wish him to survive."
The three gentlemen were silent. At length Mr. Cardross said,
"There is one worse doubt which has occurred to me. Do you think, Dr. Hamilton, that the mind is as imperfect as the body? In short, is it not likely that the poor child may turn out to be an idiot?"
"I do not know; and it will be almost impossible to judge for months yet."
"But, idiot or not," cried Mr. Menteith—a regular old Tory, who clung with true conservative veneration to the noble race which he, his father, and grandfather had served faithfully for a century and more—"idiot or not, the boy is undoubtedly Earl of Cairnforth."
"Poor child!"
The gentlemen then sat down and thoroughly discussed the whole matter, finally deciding that, until things appeared somewhat plainer, it was advisable to keep the earl's condition as much as possible from the world in general, and more especially from his own kindred. The Bruces, who lived abroad, would, it was naturally to be concluded—or Mr. Menteith, who had a lawyer's slender faith in human nature, believed so—would pounce down, like eagles upon a wounded lamb, the instant they heard what a slender thread of life hung between them and these great possessions.
Under such circumstances, for the infant to be left unprotected in the solitudes of Loch Beg was very unadvisable; and, besides, it was the guardian's duty to see that every aid which medical skill and surgical science could procure was supplied to a child so afflicted, and upon whose life so much depended. He therefore proposed and Dr. Hamilton agreed, that immediately after the funeral the little earl should be taken to Edinburg, and placed in the house of the latter, to remain there a year or two, or so long as might be necessary.
Janet Campbell was called in, and expressed herself willing to take her share—no small one—in the responsibility of this plan, if the minister would see to her "ain bairn;" that was, if the minister really thought the scheme a wise one.
"The minister's opinion seems to carry great weight here," said Dr.
Hamilton, smiling.
And it was so; not merely because of his being a minister, but because, with all his gentle, unassuming ways, he had an excellent judgment—the clear, sound, unbiased judgment which no man can ever attain to except a man who thinks little of himself; to whom his own honor and glory come ever second, and his Master's glory and service first. Therefore, both as a man and a minister, Mr. Cardross was equally and wholly reliable: charitable, because he felt his own infirmities; placing himself at no higher level than his neighbor, he was always calmly and scrupulously just. Though a learned, he was not exactly a clever man: probably his sermons, preached every Sunday for the last ten years in Cairnforth Kirk, were neither better nor worse than the generality of country sermons; but that matters little. He was a wise man and a good man, and all his parishioners, scattered over a parish of fourteen Scotch miles, deeply and dearly loved him.
"I think," said Mr. Cardross, "that this plan has many advantages, and is, under the circumstances, the best that could have been devised. True, I should like to have had the poor babe under my own eye and my wife's, that we might try to requite in some degree the many kindnesses we have received from his poor father and mother; but he will be better off in Edinburg. Give him every possible chance of life and health, and a sound mind, and then we must leave the rest to Him, who would not have sent this poor little one into the world at all if He had not had some purpose in so doing, though what that purpose is we can not see. I suppose we shall see it, and many other dark things, some time."
The minister lifted his grave, gentle eyes, and sat looking out upon the familiar view—the sunshiny loch, the green shore, and the far-away circle of mountains—while the other two gentlemen discussed a few other business matters. Then he invited them both to return with him and dine