CHAPTER XXIII.—BACK HOME AGAIN.
E
lsie and her mother travelled all night, and reached Edinburgh early the next morning. This time it was only a third-class carriage, crowded by very ordinary-looking men and women—a very different journey from the one with the wicked "fairy mother;" but the unhappy child, tired out with all she had gone through, leant her head against her mother's shoulder, and slept through the night with a sweet sense of safety and protection to which she had long been a stranger.
They found Duncan still slowly mending, but looking a mere shadow of his former bonnie self. Elsie was so overwhelmed at the sight of his poor little wasted figure, and cried so bitterly, that the nurse promptly ordered her out of the ward.
"Tell Elsie I'm quite well now," he said anxiously to Mrs. MacDougall. "She needn't cry, because we are going home; aren't we, mother? You did say we might."
"Yes, well all be happy again together soon, little lad," Mrs. MacDougall replied.
"Perhaps they hurt Elsie," Duncan continued, still anxious for Elsie. "They were bad people, mother;" and the little fellow shuddered.
They were obliged to calm him and turn his thoughts away. One of the worst points of his illness had been the fits of terror that came over him when a recollection of the Fergusons or the Murdochs passed through his brain. It had been feared that his mind was seriously affected by the fright he had undergone.
He was not yet fit to be moved, so Mrs. MacDougall decided to take Elsie home, and come again to fetch Duncan when he was ready to leave, as she had barely money enough left to take her to Dunster. Duncan was, however, convalescent, and in a fair way of recovering.
It was only now that Mrs. MacDougall, the more pressing cares of her mind relieved, had time to remember Elsie's curious statement before the magistrates. "What did you mean, child, by saying that you didn't rightly know your own name?" she asked. "Surely you were dazed with the strange faces all round you. I feared you had lost your reason."
Elsie hung her head sheepishly. Although she had heard nothing from any one on the subject, she had somehow a conviction in her mind that she had been very silly. It was easy to talk grandly to Duncan, but quite a different thing to tell the story to Mrs. MacDougall.
"I don't know. I did think that perhaps me and Duncan were the babies of Aunt Nannie's what Uncle Grosvenor sent you to take care of," Elsie stammered, growing very red.
"Good patience, child! What do you know about your aunt Nannie's babies?" Mrs. MacDougall exclaimed, in amazement. "Who have been tattling to you about what don't concern them?"
"Then we are those babies!" Elsie cried, with a flash of excitement.
"You!" cried Mrs. MacDougall; "that you are not. What could make you think such a thing? Whoever told you so much—an' I reckon your foolish old grannie was the person—might as well have told the whole story, which, however, it was my great wish should be kept quite a secret. Robbie was your poor Aunt Nannie's bairn."
"Robbie!" Elsie exclaimed, slowly; "but there were two babies, mother."
"There were twin babies, but one died the next day after it reached me, poor bairn. It was a girl baby, and the one the father took an interest in; but it died, and he cared little or nothing about Robbie, so I kept him my own self, for he was but a poor little lad, and could no bear a rough life. Often I've been tempted to let the child go back to his own flesh and blood, but I hadn't the heart, knowing there was none that would look after him with the care he needed."
"Is Robbie better than we are, mother?" Elsie asked, with the old jealousy cropping up once more. "Uncle Grosvenor is a grand laird, is he not?"
"robbie waited on him" ([p. 329]).
Mrs. MacDougall laughed. "He's just a well-to-do tradesman, though he had mighty fine airs when he used to come to Dunster; but I never liked the looks of him. He broke his poor wife's heart, and never believed it till she lay dead, and then he was sorry, and tried to make some amends. He was a bit touched when he saw his motherless bairns, and did a kind deed when he sent them to me; but he soon grew blithe and gay again, and troubled his head no more. I've never heard from him from that day to this, except that he sends me payment for the babies still. He doesn't even know that the little one died, for he has never written; and I don't know where he is; but any day he may come, and just take it into his head to fetch poor Nannie's bairn away from me: but I hope he won't, for now that he's married again and has many children, as I am told, poor Robbie will be ill-welcomed among them."
What a different tale this was from the one Elsie had concocted in her own mind! How utterly foolish and ashamed she was feeling. She would tell all, and would so ease her mind.
"Mother," she said, speaking quickly, "it was all through a letter I picked up and read, and because I always thought Robbie was your favourite more than me and Duncan. I thought he must be your little boy, and that we were not. You did buy Robbie more things, and never sent him for the milk."
"Ye're right enough, Elsie," Mrs. MacDougall said, with a sigh. "There's many a time, when I've been sore pressed, I've been tempted to take the money that Robbie's father sent to buy the clothes you and Duncan were in need of; but I've always stood against it, and never spent a penny of that money for any other purpose than the right one, and I've taken care of the child more jealously than if he was my own. But the Evil One himself must have put it in your heart to be jealous of that poor little lad. With all my care, I doubt that he'll ever see manhood. And as for the letter, I think I know the one you mean. If you found it, you'd no call to read it."
"But I read it, and I kept it," Elsie confessed, seeing that her mother had quite failed to comprehend all that she had tried to tell her. "It was for that I wanted to run away—to go and find who I thought was our own father—and I took Duncan with me. I thought it would be easy. I didn't mean to hurt Duncan."
"I will be no harsh to you, Elsie," Mrs. MacDougall said, sorrowfully. "It's a sore thing for a mother to think of; but God has taught you His lesson in His own way. I doubt you'll never do the like again."
It was only by degrees that Mrs. MacDougall heard the whole history of the children's wanderings, or Elsie fully understood the terrible dangers to which she had, by her own act, willingly exposed herself and Duncan. Never had she fully realised what the word "home" meant until returning to it, after having been homeless, lonely, and outcast, she was received with the glad welcome that no one else in all the wide world would have extended to her.
Mrs. MacDougall was, like many of her race, a woman of few words, and not given to demonstrations of affection, yet with a deeply-rooted, fervent feeling of attachment to her own flesh and blood that nothing could destroy, that was only equalled by her strong sense of religious duty. In that terrible week of suspense, when she received no tidings of the missing children, her hair had become grey, and her face aged by many years. In seeking them out, she had spent unhesitatingly the hardly-scraped savings of years, laid by for the decent burying of her old mother and herself. These facts spoke more strongly than words. Even Elsie knew well enough the terrible degradation an honest, respectable Scottish woman would feel it that any of her birth and kin should fall upon the charity of strangers.
Elsie had been ever a tiresome child. She was what people call clever—that is to say, she had from an early age the power of thinking for herself, and forming her own ideas on many subjects. This very activity of brain often overwhelmed the better feelings of her heart, which was not really bad. It was her own supposed cleverness that had led her into such a grievous error concerning that unfortunate letter she had found, her restless curiosity that had led her into the temptation of reading it, whereas Duncan's slower brain would have allowed his heart time to speak its protest against an action that he had been trained to regard as mean and dishonourable. Cleverness is a dangerous gift, apt to lead into very stray paths, unless there is firm principle to weigh it. Lucy Murdoch was extremely clever. Better for her to have been without one talent than to have used all ten to her own utter ruin.
Mrs. MacDougall gave Elsie no bitter reproaches. She explained to her how grievous a sin she had committed, and what sorrow she had brought on those who had always shown her the truest kindness. She would allow no one to speak to Elsie about it, except the good old minister at the manse, who had known her from her birth. Farmer Jarrett greatly desired to give her a good talking to, but Mrs. MacDougall said, in her true Scottish fashion, "Nay, neighbour; the Lord had pointed His own moral, an' we can no better it. She has the little brother she loves always before her eyes to warn her." And this was true enough. Duncan had never recovered the effects of the fever. He seemed to have lost all his old robustness and vigour, taking little interest in anything, only caring to sit quiet and undisturbed before the fire. No words could have affected her more than that most pitiful sight. Mrs. MacDougall often caught Elsie's eyes fixed on the child with a wistful, sorrowful expression. She and Robbie waited on him continually, with patient unfailing tenderness, and both the children vied with each other as to who could be the more kind and thoughtful for him.
Mrs. MacDougall from that time changed her treatment of Robbie, and moreover, explained to all three children the circumstances of his birth. She believed that she had erred in practising even this well-meant deceit, intended for the good both of Robbie and her own two children, which had, however, resulted in the very jealousy she had tried to prevent. Robbie benefited by the change, and was certainly far happier. He grew less babyish—stronger both in mind and body. The old jealousy died away, and Elsie liked him far better as a cousin—yet treated in every way like herself—than she had done as a brother.
For several years no one dared to mention in Duncan's presence the sad experience he had lived through. His terror and excitement were so intense at the mere recollection of it, that the utmost care was necessary. He could never go out alone, for if he met a person who seemed to his morbid fancy to resemble either of the Fergusons or the Murdochs, his shuddering fear was shocking to witness. He and Robbie had quite changed places. It was he now who needed all the anxious, watchful care that in former days Elsie would have called petting.
If no one reproached her, it is certain she reproached herself, more and more bitterly as she grew older, and understood how grave a misfortune she had brought upon Duncan, the one person she was most fond of in this world. She had turned his very trust in her into the means of sacrificing him. Sometimes she was so tortured by this thought that she could hardly bear it. "I will never leave him as long as I live," she often said to herself, as a sort of reparation for what he had suffered. "I will take care of him till I die."
But there is a hope that in course of time, after he has passed the years of boyhood, he may recover his old strength, and in this hope Elsie lives.
the end.