Chapter Eight.
The Prodigal’s Return.
“I have stayed too late. They’ll be wondering what has kept me,” said Archie to himself, as he saw the firelight gleaming from the cottage-window. “I wonder where Lily can be, that she didn’t come to meet me? I wonder if anything has happened?”
Something had happened. He paused a moment at the door to listen, as a strange voice reached his ear. It was a man’s voice. Going in softly, he saw his aunt in her accustomed seat, and close beside her, with his head bowed down on his hands, sat a stranger. There was a strange look, too, on his aunt’s face, the boy thought, and the tears were running down over her cheeks. Wondering and anxious, he silently approached her.
“Archie, are you come home?” said she, holding out her hand to him as he drew near. “Hugh, this is your uncle’s son. Archie, this is your cousin Hugh come home again.”
With a cry Archie sprang forward—not to take his cousin’s offered hand, but to clasp him round the neck; and, trembling like a leaf, the returned wanderer held him in a close embrace.
“I knew you would come back,” said Archie at last through his tears. “I always told Lilias you would be sure to come back again.—Oh, Aunt Janet, are you not glad?—And you’ll never go away again? Oh, I was sure you would come home soon!”
Even his mother had not received her prodigal without some questioning, and the sudden clasping of Archie’s arms about his neck, the perfect trust of the child’s heart, was like balm to the remorseful tortures of Hugh Blair, and great drops from the man’s eyes mingled with the boy’s happy tears.
“Archie,” said his aunt after a little time, “who spoke to you of your cousin Hugh?”
“Oh, many a one,” answered Archie, as he gently stroked his cousin’s hair. “Donald Ross, and the Muirlands shepherds, and Mrs Stirling.” And then he added, in a hushed voice, “Lilias heard you speak his name in your prayers often, when you thought her sleeping.”
Hugh Blair groaned in bitterness of spirit. The thought of his mother’s sleepless nights of prayer for him revealed more of the agony of all those years of waiting than her lips could ever utter. He thought of this night and that in his career of reckless folly, and said to himself: “It may have been then or there that my name was on her lips. O God, judge me not in Thine anger!”
The words did not pass his lips, but the look he turned to his mother’s face was a prayer for pardon, and she strove to smile as she said hopefully, “It is all past now, my son. God did not forget us—blessed be His name!”
“And Lily!” exclaimed Archie, starting up at last. “Lily! where are you? Oh, will she not be glad?”
“I am here, Archie. What has happened?” said Lilias at the door.
“Cousin Hugh has come home again,” he whispered, drawing her forward; and then she saw the stranger who had taken the water from her hand. He knew her, too, as the child who had bidden him “God-speed!”
“Ah! is this the wee white Lily of Glen Elder?” he said softly.
Lilias’s greeting was very quiet.
“I am glad you are come home again, Cousin Hugh,” said she, as she gave him her hand; and then she looked at her aunt.
“God has been better to me than my fears. He has given me the desire of my heart—blessed be His name!” whispered Mrs Blair, as Lilias bent over her.
All that it is needful to give here of Hugh Blair’s story may be given in a few words. He had not enlisted as a soldier, as had been at first believed. But, in an hour of great misery and shame, he had gone away from home, leaving behind him debt and dishonour, fully resolved never to set foot in his native land again till he had retrieved his fortunes and redeemed his good name.
To redeem one’s good name is easily resolved upon, but not so easily accomplished. He took with him, to the faraway land to which he had exiled himself, the same hatred of restraint, the same love of sinful pleasures, that had been his bane at home. It is true he left the companions who had led him astray and encouraged him in his foolish course; but, alas! there are in all lands evil-doers enough to hinder the well-doing of those who have need to mend their ways. He sinned much, and suffered much, before he found a foothold for himself in the land of strangers.
Many a mother’s prayers have followed a son into just such scenes of vice and misery as he passed through before God’s messenger, in the shape of sore sickness, found him. Alone in a strange land, he lay for weeks dependent on the unwilling charity of strangers. The horrors of that fearful illness, the dreariness of that slow convalescence, could not be told. Helpless, homeless, friendless, with no memories of the past which his follies had not embittered, no hopes for the future which he dared to cherish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of despair.
But he was not forsaken utterly. When he was ready to perish, a countryman of his own found him, and, for his country’s sake, befriended him. He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here, under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm and faithful friend.
Now, indeed, he began life anew. Bound by many ties of gratitude to his employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain. During the years that followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a time, he was comparatively a man of means.
He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however. He had kept silence towards his mother. He had not forgotten her. He made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her forget all that was painful in the past. He had never thought of her all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen Elder. It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the home of her youth and her middle age.
When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother’s place, it was a terrible shock. All that he could learn concerning her was that she had had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell him.
As he stood before the closed door of what had once been his home, it seemed to him that a mark more fearful than that of Cain was upon him. Heart-sick with remorse, he turned away. Not daring to make further inquiries, lest he might learn the worst, he went on, past familiar places, with averted eyes, feeling in his misery that the guilt of his mother’s death must rest upon his sinful soul unless he might hear her living lips pronounce the pardon of which he knew himself to be unworthy.
God was merciful to him. He opened the door of the humble cottage by the common, to inquire his way; and there, in the old armchair so well remembered, sat his mother, with her Bible on her knee. She did not know him, but she gave him kindly welcome, bidding him sit and rest, as he seemed weary. She did not know him till she felt his hot tears dropping on her hands, and heard him praying for pardon at her feet.
It would do no good to tell what passed between the mother and the son. That the meeting was joyful, we need not say; but it was very sorrowful, too. For years of sin and years of suffering must leave traces too deep for sudden joy to efface. Hugh Blair had left his mother in the prime of life, a woman having few equals as regards all that in a woman is admired. He returned to find her feeble, shrunken, helpless, with the hair beneath her widow’s cap as white as snow. He had redeemed his good name; he had returned to surround her last days with comfort; he had brought wealth greater than had blessed her most prosperous time. But for all those years of poverty and doubt and anxiety, those years which had made her old before her time, what could atone for these? And as for her, even amid her thankful gladness the thought would come, “How shall I ever learn to put trust in him, after all these years? Can his guileless child’s heart come back again to him?”
Oh, yes! the meeting was sorrowful, as well as glad.
With the joy of Archie and Lilias no misgiving mingled. Their cousin Hugh had come home again. That was enough for them. In his youth he had done many foolish things, and maybe some wrong things, they thought. He had sinned against God and his mother. He had left his home, like the prodigal, choosing his own will and way rather than do his duty. But now, like the prodigal, he had come home repenting; and the best robe and the ring for his hand these happy children made ready for him.
“There is joy among the angels to-night, Lily,” said Archie, coming back to whisper it to her, after she thought he was asleep.
“Yes: ‘this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost and is found,’” answered Lilias softly.
“And now Aunt Janet’s midnight prayers will be changed to thanksgivings,” was the last thought of the weary child, as she lay down that night. Her first thought in the morning was that her aunt would not want the children for a few days at least, now that her cousin had come home, and she would get rest and be well again. Her next was that Mrs Stirling’s golden sovereigns might stay with the other nine-and-twenty in the china teapot; and a curious feeling of regret mingled itself with the pleasure of the thought.
“I almost wish that I had taken them,—just to show her that it wasn’t pride; but I dare say Hugh would be better pleased as it is. I wonder if he is strong and ready at doing things? He doesn’t look very strong; but he is a man and will know how to manage things; and my aunt will not be anxious and cast down any more. And now I see how foolish I was to vex myself with what was to happen to us. I might have known that the Lord was caring for us all the time. ‘Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’” Lilias repeated the words with a sudden gush of happy tears, hiding her face in the pillow, lest her aunt should see.
Hugh and Archie went over the hills to the kirk at Dunmoor that day; but Lilias dreaded the long walk a little, and she dreaded a great deal the wondering looks and curious questioning which the sight of the stranger would be sure to call forth. So she went to the kirk close at hand, saying nothing to the people who spoke to her of her cousin’s return, lest their coming and going might break the Sabbath quiet of her aunt. And a very quiet afternoon they had together. Her aunt sat silent, thinking her own thoughts; and Lilias sat “resting,” she said, with her cheek on her little Bible, and her eyes fixed on the faraway clouds, till the cousins came home again.
As for Archie, it was with a radiant face, indeed, that he went into the full kirk, holding the hand of his cousin Hugh. Some in the kirk remembered him, others guessed who he might be; and many a doubtful glance was sent back to the days of his wayward youth, and many an anxious thought was stirred as to whether his coming home was to be for good or for ill.
It was well for him that he had learnt to hide his thoughts from his fellow-men, to suffer and give no sign of pain, or he would have startled the Sabbath quiet of the kirk that day by many a sigh and bitter groan. Sitting in his old familiar place, and listening to the voice which had taught and warned his childhood, it came very clearly and sharply before him how impossible it is to undo an evil deed. Closing his eyes, he could see himself sitting there a child, as his young cousin sat now at his side; and between this time and that lay years darkened by deeds which, in the bitterness of his remorse and self-upbraidings, he said to himself “could never be outlived—never forgotten.” These years had been lost out of his life—utterly lost for all good; but, oh, how full of sin to him, of pain to others! His sin might be forgiven, washed away in that blood which cleanseth from all sin. But could his mother, could others, who had suffered through it, ever quite outlive the shame and pain?
It seemed to him that the grave, earnest faces about him were settling themselves into sternness at the stirring of the same bitter memories and accusing thoughts; and he would fain have escaped from the glances, some of them kind and others half averted, that followed him into the kirk-yard when the service was over. But he could not escape.
Who could resist the look on Archie’s joyful face, so frankly challenging a welcome for the returned wanderer? Not James Muir, nor the master, nor scores besides. Not even Nancy Stirling herself, when Archie, sending a smile up into her face, said—
“This is my cousin Hugh come home again.”
“Oh, ay! he’s come home again. I kenned him when he was a guileless laddie, like yourself, Archie, man,” said Nancy, not sparing her little prick to the sore heart. “And where’s your sister to-day? Is your aunt so ill yet as to need to keep her from the kirk?” she added, with the air of finding a grievance in Lilias’s absence. “Or is the lassie not well herself? She looked weary and worn enough when I bade her good-night at the stepping-stones in the gloaming. You’re not come home over soon, Maister Hugh. It’s time your mother had some one to care for her besides these bairns.”
Archie looked indignant; but Hugh said gravely and gently—
“You are right, Mrs Stirling. You have been a kind friend to my mother and my cousin Lilias, they tell me, and I thank you from my heart.”
Nancy looked not a little discomfited at this unexpected answer.
“It would have been liker Hugh Blair to turn on his heel and go his own way,” said she afterwards; “but it may be that many a thing that was laid to his door in the old days belonged less to him than to those who beguiled him into evil, poor lad! And, whether or not, it would ill become me to cast up to him his past ill-deeds to-day.”
“And all the folk were so glad to see him!” said Archie when he came home. Hugh was lingering outside, speaking to a friend who had walked with them over the hills, and Archie spoke fast and earnestly to have all told before he came in. “And they all minded on you, aunt, and said how thankful you would be, and how the Lord was good to you in your old age. And James Muir said he hoped he was never to go away again; and Allan Grant said that English Smith was to give up Glen Elder, and why should it not go back into the old hands again? They all said he would surely stay in the countryside now.”
“And what said my son to that?” asked Mrs Blair tremulously. She had not ventured to ask him herself yet.
“Oh, he said little. I think it was because his heart was so full. And, Lily, he put five golden sovereigns into the poor’s box! Steenie Muir told me that he saw his grandfather count it, and he heard him say that now surely the Lord was to bring back the good days to Glen Elder; and he thanked God for your sake, aunt. And, Lily, who kens but you may be ‘the wee white Lily of Glen Elder’ again?”
“A ‘wee white Lily,’ indeed,” said her aunt fondly and gravely; but Lilias laughed, first at the thought of the golden sovereigns and Nancy’s “nine-and-twenty more,” destined still to be hidden away in the china teapot, and then a little at being called the “Lily of Glen Elder.”
“It’s like a story in a book, aunt. It would be too much happiness to have the old days come back again—the happy days at Glen Elder;” and then her ready tears flowed at the thought that followed—
“They can never—never quite come back again.”