"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."