Life, when we calmly analyze it, is made up to us all alike of three simple elements—­joy, sorrow, and work.  Some of us get tolerably equal proportions of each of these; some unequal—­or we fancy so; but in reality, as the ancient sage says truly, “the same things come alike to all.”

The Earl of Cairnforth, in his imperfect fragment of a life, had had little enough of enjoyment; but he knew how to endure better than most people.  He had, however, still to learn that existence is not wholly endurance; that a complete human life must have in it not only submission but resistance; the fighting against evil and in defense of good; the struggle with divine help to overcome evil with good; and finally the determination not to sit down tamely to misery but to strive after happiness—­lawful happiness, both for ourselves and others.  In short, not only passively to accept joy or grief, but to take means to secure the one and escape the other; to “work out our own salvation” for each day, as we are told to do it for an eternity, though with the same divine limitation—­humbling to all pride, and yet encouraging to ceaseless effort—­“for it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

That self-absorption of loss, which follows all great anguish; that shrinking up unto one’s self, which is the first and most natural instinct of a creature smitten with a sorrow not unmingled with cruel wrong, is, with most high natures, only temporary.  By-and-by comes the merciful touch which says to the lame, “Arise and walk;” to the sick, “Take up thy bed and go into thine house.”  And the whisper of peace is, almost invariably, a whisper of labor and effort:  there is not only something to be suffered, but something to be done.

With the earl this state was longer in coming, because the prior collapse did not come to him at once.  The excitement of perpetual expectation—­the preparing for some catastrophe, which he felt sure was to follow, and the incessant labor entailed by his wide enquiries, in which he had no confidant but Mr. Mearns, the clerk, and him he trusted as little as possible, lest any suspicion or disgrace should fall upon Helen’s husband—­all this kept him in a state of unnatural activity and strength.

But when the need for action died away; when Helen’s letters betrayed nothing; and when, though she did not return, and while expressing most bitter regret, yet gave sufficiently valid reasons for not returning in her husband’s still delicate health—­after June, Lord Cairnforth fell into a condition, less of physical than mental sickness, which lasted a long time, and was very painful to himself, as well as to those that loved him.  He was not ill, but his usual amount of strength—­so small always—­became much reduced; neither was he exactly irritable —­his sweet temper never could sink into irritability; but he was, as Malcolm expressed it, “dour,” difficult to please; easily fretted about trifles; inclined to take sad and cynical views of things.