“Not likely!” Arthur said with a bitter laugh. “We’ve no money for hotels. We’re not even stopping in Battleford for supplies. We have to push on. My brother’s waiting outside.”
Everything in the hotel lobby where they were standing was swimming before Elspeth’s eyes. A huge Chinese vase seemed to topple from its stand, but miraculously never reached the floor; when Elspeth focused on it again, it was back where it belonged.
Arthur asked again if she’d be all right here until her relatives turned up. She must have found words to reassure him, because he finally left, and then the maid showed her and Robbie through to a small room at the back of the hotel. Elspeth lay down on the narrow bed and slept.
Chapter 10
“Not seldom privations”
APRIL 29, 1903
Elspeth opened her eyes slowly and looked around, wondering where she was. The room was narrow, bare of furniture except for a wooden chair and a spindly table on which stood a cracked pitcher and washbowl. Bright sunlight poured through the small window. Her traveling bag was sitting in one corner.
It was the sight of the battered traveling bag that brought back the memory of the journey—the boat, the train, and then the wagon ride to Battleford. And when they got to Battleford, Uncle Donald had been there—and he slammed the door when they tried to get in. Or had that been a dream?
She struggled to separate the dream from reality, but the picture of Uncle Donald was so vivid that she was sure he’d really been here in the room.
Where was Robbie? He had cried, wanting supper, and she had nothing to give him. Then someone had come in, someone she knew, and had kept asking if she understood. She’d been glad when they went away. And Mr. Barr had been there, too, talking to her. He said he would help her—or had that been a dream too?
So much remembering tired her. She drifted off to sleep again. The next time she awakened, there was a man sitting on the chair beside the bed. He was dressed in black, and he had a small black beard like a fringe around his chin. Elspeth tried to ask him who he was, but her words were thick and jumbled.
He seemed to understand, though, because he leaned over her, saying, “I’m Dr. Wallace. I’m going to give you some more medicine to make you sleep.”
His eyes were blue and kind.
Papa’s eyes were blue.
When Elspeth woke again, the man was gone. She wondered if he had really been there, or if he was just another dream person like Uncle Donald and Isaac Barr. Or maybe she had talked to them too. And where was Robbie?
The room was very hot. The blankets felt heavy, so Elspeth pushed them back. The next moment she was wide awake, struggling to sit up. What was this that she was wearing? A white nightgown with a lace collar. Where was her skirt with the bodice? Where was her money?
With her breath coming in short gasps, Elspeth crawled across the room to her traveling bag. Shakily she sorted through her belongings. The skirt wasn’t there. She dragged herself back to bed. As she lay down her mind raced, all her thoughts suddenly in sharp focus. The discovery that the money was gone erased the dulling effect of her sickness and the medicine. With painful clarity, she recalled everything from the day of Papa’s death. . . .
“Robbie! Robbie!” Her voice sounded weak and strange in her ears.
The door opened. Elspeth turned eagerly toward it, but it was not Robbie who came into the room. A tall woman with upswept hair paused in the doorway and then crossed over to the bed, her blue dress rustling as she walked. There was something about her disinterested expression, even when she inquired if Elspeth were feeling better, that reminded Elspeth of the social worker in Glasgow. Elspeth labeled her one of them and drew further down under the covers.
“Well?” the woman asked, waiting for Elspeth to speak.
“Where’s Robbie?”
“Is that all you can say?”
“Where is he?” Elspeth asked raising herself on her elbow.
“No one has seen this Robbie you keep asking about—or your Uncle Donald and Aunt Maud. What we want to know is, who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m Elspeth MacDonald,” she answered weakly. “I came here with Robbie to find—to find—Mr. Barr.”
“Mr. Barr? Isaac Barr? What business could you have with Isaac Barr?”
“I was hoping he’d help me.”
“I don’t know what help you expect to get from him, but you missed him anyway. He was here last night and left this morning.”
He was here last night. Then had he been here in or room—or was it a dream?
“He’s gone up to the colony to sort things out if he can,” the woman continued. “He promised land to people on the boat, but then he didn’t register the claims, and now other people have settled these sections. They say, too, that he’s been making a good profit for himself on supplies he sells through the syndicate—money that should go to the company. But I’ll say this for Mr. Barr. He’s been good for business. Every room in the hotel has been full for days. And here you are, taking up a room I could be renting out! What guarantee do I have that this uncle and aunt of yours are going to pay?”
“I paid for the room! I paid the girl at the door, and I can pay the rest when I get my skirt back.”
“I know nothing about you paying. And what does your skirt have to do with it?”
“But where’s Robbie?” Elspeth asked distractedly. “He’s four years old and has fair hair.”
“There’s been no four-year-old around here. He must have gone with your aunt and uncle.”
“He’s here somewhere,” Elspeth insisted. “He must be hiding.”
“For five days?” the woman asked.
“Have I been ill for five days?” Elspeth whispered in a frightened voice.
“Five days—as sure as my name’s Kate Morgan! Dr. Wallace has been coming in twice a day, sometimes more. A fine thing, your aunt and uncle just leaving you here like this.”
“They didn’t leave me,” Elspeth said. “I’m alone, except for Robbie.”
It took Mrs. Morgan some time to grasp that Elspeth had not been left behind by her aunt and uncle and that there was no way Robbie could be with them. “We thought, maybe, they didn’t want to lose time waiting for you to get better,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Everyone’s in such a rush to get up there. Goodness knows what they expect to find! But I still can’t make out how you got here alone—and with a little brother!”
Shaking her head, Mrs. Morgan went off to fetch Dr. Wallace, sure that the sickness had muddled the girl’s mind.
Dr. Wallace came to the hotel right away. Kate Morgan had been none too pleased, when he told her, on his first visit, that the child couldn’t be moved. Mrs. Morgan had made it clear that she didn’t have the time to take on the role of nurse. She already had all she could do, with the hotel full, and her stepdaughter, Peg, going off without a word to anyone. At first Mrs. Morgan had been afraid that Elspeth had scarlet fever (there were rumored to be cases in Saskatoon), but Dr. Wallace had reassured her about that. He, himself, had wondered if the child would pull through. She was poor and undernourished, but she did seem to have a core of inner strength that gave him hope.
When Dr. Wallace walked into the room, Elspeth recognized him at once by his shiny black suit and trim black beard. “Do you know where Robbie is?” she asked, for that was all that mattered now.
Sitting on the chair beside the bed, Dr. Wallace said, “You’ve been talking a lot about this Robbie, and about your aunt and uncle. Even about Isaac Barr. But I still haven’t been able to piece your story together.”
“Where’s Robbie?” Elspeth asked again.
“I can’t help you find him until you tell me more. Why don’t you begin at the beginning?”
The doctor listened to Elspeth’s soft Scottish voice as she told of Papa and Mama and Robbie in Glasgow. Of her father’s dream of owning his own land and of how Isaac Barr had promised to make the dream come true. She spoke, falteringly, of her parents’ de
aths, and the social worker coming and wanting to take Robbie from her.
“So you ran away,” Dr. Wallace said quietly. “I ran away from Scotland, too.” Then he added, as much to himself as to Elspeth, “Megan must be twelve years old now. Leaving childhood behind and becoming a woman. I wonder if she’s like her mother. Her mother—Jeannie Wallace—was my wife.”
Elspeth wasn’t listening. She was thinking about Robbie. Was he still a Shadow Bairn? She began to tell the doctor about how they had been Shadow Bairns and hid from them on the boat, about talking to Isaac Barr, and about the long train ride to Saskatoon. Dr. Wallace felt her frustration when the immigration men would not listen, and her contentment on the trail to Battleford; but all the time he was remembering Jeannie Wallace and how she had died in childbirth with him beside her. He might have saved her and not the child. In saving the child he lost Jeannie. As it turned out, he lost them both, for he gave the baby, Megan, to Jeannie’s mother to raise, and came out to Canada. He had never been back.
“I’ve got to find Robbie,” Elspeth was saying, a frantic edge to her voice. “And I’ve got to find my money—the money in my skirt! This isn’t my nightgown, you know.”
“It’s what you were wearing when Mrs. Morgan called me in to see you.”
“Then Mrs. Morgan must have taken my money.
“I don’t believe that,” Dr. Wallace answered. “She wasn’t any too pleased to find you here, but she didn’t take your money.”
“Then the girl did! The girl who rented me the room.”
“Peg? Peg moved out—probably up to the colony,” Dr. Wallace said thoughtfully. “But there’s nothing to prove that you had any money, is there?”
“Arthur knew, because I paid him to bring us here,” Elspeth said.
“Arthur knew? And where is he now?” Dr. Wallace asked sharply. “He left you here on your own, knowing you were sick.”
“I don’t think he realized I was sick,” Elspeth said. “And he didn’t steal my money.”
“Could Robbie be with him?”
“Maybe,” Elspeth said slowly. Her gray eyes were wide and appealing, as she added, “You will help me find him, won’t you? Everything I’ve done was to keep us together. I can’t go on without him.”
The doctor looked at Elspeth’s thin, eager face. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
“I’m thirteen, nearly fourteen,” Elspeth answered. “When I find Robbie, I’m going to get a job so we can be together. I though maybe I could work as a maid, or in a hotel.”
“I’ll look for Robbie,” Dr. Wallace said at last. “But when I find him, I think you should go back to Scotland. Life is too hard, too uncertain, for you here on your own.”
“No! We can’t go back,” Elspeth said earnestly. “But please, please find Robbie!”
“You’ll have to tell me again about the people you traveled with from Saskatoon, and anyone else who might have befriended him.”
“If he’s with someone I know, why haven’t they brought him back?” Elspeth asked.
“There hasn’t been time. The way the weather has been, they’ll not have reached the colony yet. It’s a three-day ride in good weather. And it takes time to choose land and register a claim. It could be weeks before they have a chance to get back here. Are you sure no one told you they were taking him?”
“Sometimes I think there was someone . . . but I only remember Uncle Donald. . . . and that must have been a dream. Yet someone came.” The memory tortured Elspeth and would haunt her for weeks.
Dr. Wallace, thinking back to how ill she had been, realized there was little point in pressing her.
During the week that followed, Elspeth wondered impatiently when Dr. Wallace was going to start looking for Robbie. She didn’t know that he was already making inquiries around Battleford. It puzzled him that no one had seen the boy in the town or in the hotel. Sometimes he asked himself how he had got so involved in this girl’s affairs. He even found himself planting the idea in Mrs. Morgan’s mind that Elspeth could wash dishes in the hotel in exchange for her room and board while he was gone. That way, she’d have somewhere to stay.
“She hardly looks strong enough,” Kate Morgan answered. “Keeping a place like this going is hard work.”
“I’m sure it is,” the doctor agreed. “But there must be something she could help with. It would keep her mind off Robbie.”
“You really fell for that story, didn’t you? Mrs. Morgan said with a sniff. “If you ask me, it’s nothing but lies! What’s she doing here when her aunt and uncle are in Manitoba? And all this nonsense about someone stealing her money!”
However, Kate Morgan did give Elspeth a job. She grudgingly admitted to Dr. Wallace before he left for the colony that Elspeth was a willing worker and didn’t spend all her time in front of the mirror the way Peg did.
When Dr. Wallace rode away, Elspeth’s hands were busy—washing dishes, peeling potatoes, making beds—but her thoughts were with the doctor. Would he find Robbie with Arthur and Geoffrey? She remembered saying goodbye to Arthur in the hall. She was sure Robbie had been with her after that. He had cried in their room, and then someone had taken him away. Someone she knew. But all that remained in her mind was a shadow, a distorted shadow in a dream. Sometimes, especially in the lonely hours of the night, she imagined that the immigration man had taken Robbie and sent him back to Scotland, leaving her alone as a punishment for deceiving him. But Robbie wouldn’t have gone with the immigration man. He knew that the immigration man was one of them. Robbie had to be with Arthur or Violet. Dr. Wallace would find him.
Chapter 11
“More of less of hardship”
MAY, 1903
After nearly twelve years in the Saskatchewan country, Dr. Wallace knew the prairie well enough not to fear it, yet he could appreciate the effect of these vast open spaces on the newly arrived settlers. They were people accustomed to bustling towns and cozy villages, people accustomed to walls and fences and hills and trees, people accustomed to people.
Dr. Wallace’s destination was Headquarter’s Camp on the Fourth Meridian. In the land agent’s office he met William Reed, who dispelled any lingering worry that there was no such person as Robbie.
“That lad had a way with animals,” the big farmer said slowly. “He had no fear in him. He’d walk right up to my Clydesdale horses and feed them a handful of grass. A sharp little fellow, but too young to look after himself if he has wandered out there somewhere on the prairie.”
“Have you seen him since you left Battleford?’ Dr. Wallace asked.
William Reed shook his head. “Not that I remember,” he said.
With the help of directions from the land agent, Dr. Wallace found the Simms’s claim. Violet was cooking dinner in a small tent. Sidney was struggling to plow the first furrows, although the ground was too wet to work easily. He was going to use the clods of earth turned over by the plow to build their house.
“It isn’t what I thought of back at Mrs. Farthington’s when I bragged to Elsie that I’d be mistress of my own home,” Violet confessed ruefully to Dr. Wallace. “But it’s a start, Sidney says. Just till we get money from our first crop.”
Violet was terribly upset when she learned the reason for the doctor’s visit. But with Sidney busy with the plowing, and their nearest neighbor more than a mile away, she was hungering for someone to talk to. Dr. Wallace soon formed a clear picture of the boy he was looking for. A friendly little chap, with tousled hair and shabby clothes, who chewed on an old toy.
“He used to sit up there on Beauty’s back looking out for Indians, with that ragged Pig-Bear of his,” Violet said. “You don’t suppose the Indians have him, do you? He was awfully interested in them. Not frightened, just interested. He’d have gone with them if they’d asked him.”
Violet had not seen Robbie since they left Battleford. She didn’t know much about the others who had traveled with them in the wagon train from Saskatoon to Battleford either. They had all g
one their separate ways. Some had spent a few days in Battleford resting and buying provisions. Others had gone directly to the colony.
When Sidney came in from his plowing, Violet invited Dr. Wallace to stay for dinner. Over the meal, he listened to Sidney talk about the land he was going to plow and the crops he was going to grow.
“It’s like Barr says—there’s wealth in this land!” Sidney said eagerly. “London was never like this!”
Dr. Wallace didn’t know whether to be impressed by the young man’s enthusiasm or amused by his innocence.
The following day, Dr. Wallace rode down to the Beattie’s claim, which was in an isolated area near the southern boundary of the colony. They had chosen good land, and already had the beginnings of a barn. Beside their tent was a great pile of crates and furniture, covered over by a tarpaulin.
“Anybody here?” Dr. Wallace shouted.
A woman emerged from the tent. One look at her hard, unresponsive face made the doctor think that perhaps it was the isolation and not the good land that had drawn her to this place.
“Mrs. Beattie?”
She nodded.
“I’m making enquiries about a lost boy, Robbie MacDonald. He traveled from Saskatoon with the Whitcomb brothers.”
She stared at him resentfully and said nothing.
“Where’s your husband?” Dr. Wallace asked. “Maybe he knows something.”
“About a lost bairn? Not him! He’s away buying lumber for the house. I’ll be glad when he gets started on it. Do you see what the rain is doing to my furniture?”
“There’s plenty of people having to get along without furniture,” Dr. Wallace said.
“Aye! Because they didn’t have the foresight to bring it with them,” Mrs. Beattie said with a sniff.
“Did you ever hear anything about the girl Elspeth MacDonald having money with her?” Dr. Wallace asked.
“She didn’t have any money,” Mrs. Beattie answered. “They were penniless bairns going out to live on the charity of relatives.”
“They weren’t going out to relatives. They do have an aunt and uncle in Manitoba, but they know nothing about the children coming.”
The Journey of the Shadow Bairns Page 9