The Journey of the Shadow Bairns

  ISBN: 9781483544373

  For KATHLEEN BLACK ANDERSON

  and the descendants of Arthur and Louisa Black

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. A land of brave and conquering men

  2. Sometimes you must suffer

  3. Difficulties

  4. Steppingstones to victory

  5. If you are afraid

  6. Drawbacks

  7. Stay at home—don’t come to Canada

  8. On the surface of the soil

  9. Obstacles are something to overcome

  10. Not seldom privation

  11. More or less of hardship

  12. Hard work and plenty of it

  13. The wealth of the land

  14. Success

  15. A picture that is highly rose-colored

  About the Author

  Credits

  Chapter 1

  “A land of brave and conquering men”

  NOVEMBER, 1902

  Elspeth MacDonald stood by the window staring out at the slanting rain. When she moved her head, the uneven glass distorted the tall, narrow tenements across the street so that they seemed warped and crooked. She used to think, when they first came to live in Glasgow five years ago, that if she moved her head fast enough the buildings would topple over, letting her see the ocean. Now she knew that beyond those buildings were more buildings, and more beyond that, all the way to the shipyards where Papa worked. Elspeth sighed. Would she never stop missing her Highland home by the sea?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by an insistent tug at her worn dress and a plaintive voice asking, “Please, Elspeth. Can’t we go to the station to see the trains?”

  “For the third time, Robbie—no!” Elspeth said impatiently. “It’s too wet.”

  “But you said you’d take me,” Robbie persisted.

  “It wasn’t raining then,” Elspeth answered shortly.

  “Take him out for a bit—just to play in the close. There’s a good lass,” their mother said, pulling her chair closer to the meager fire. Elspeth was about to protest, but Mama began to cough again.

  Suddenly the room seemed so small and cluttered that Elspeth herself wanted to get outside. “Get your coat on,” she told Robbie, taking her own coat from the peg by the door.

  Robbie struggled into a gray jacket that was too tight for him and short in the sleeves.

  “Wait till I get Pig-Bear ready,” he said, looking around the room for the piece of flannel that served as Pig-Bear’s coat.

  “You’re not taking that ragged old animal!” Elspeth said sharply.

  “Let Pig-Bear stay with me,” Mama suggested quietly, reaching out and taking the stuffed animal from the little boy’s hand. Then she adjusted Robbie’s cap, pulling it firmly down on his head so that it covered his unruly curls.

  “Be careful on the stairs,” she called after them as they went out the door together.

  Elspeth and Robbie clattered down the worn stone steps of the stairway that they shared with five other families. The stairs were poorly lit and the air was heavy with the damp, sour smells of decay and cats. At the bottom they reached the close, or passageway, which led out to the street. It was here that the tenement children often gathered to play on wet days. Today both the street and close were deserted, the biting wind and early darkness having driven the other children indoors.

  Robbie crouched down in the doorway of the close, collecting a few stones and arranging them in a pattern on the ground. Elspeth watched, wrapping her coat more tightly around her thin body. The way wee Rob could be so oblivious of his surroundings and amuse himself with so little always filled her with a mixture of irritation and admiration. He could find as much to interest him in a Glasgow gutter as she had found at his age in the clear waters of the Morvan Burn that ran through their farm into Loch Nevis. Robbie had never known the croft on Loch Nevis that she and Mama and Papa had left behind five years before. He had been born in Glasgow and had lived all his four years in one room in a tenement building.

  Elspeth was only eight when they left the farm, but the little stone house, with the mountains rising steeply behind and the waves breaking on the white sands out front, was still sharp in her mind. She remembered the rich smell of the slow-burning peat in the fireplace, and the vivid purple of the heather on the hill, and the cry of the curlew on the moor. Despite the wild beauty, Papa had not been able to make a living on their few acres of heath and bog and rock, and so they had come to Glasgow. Papa had found a job in the shipyards, hoping to earn enough money to buy medicine for Mama and someday move back to the farm again. But here they were, five years later, still crowded in one room, with walls so thin that they could hear their neighbors’ shouting and arguing. And Mama was no better. If anything, the cough was worse, and lately she tired even more easily.

  A thin gray cat sidled into the doorway, and Robbie immediately abandoned his game with the stones to stroke the animal. It was as starved for affection as it was for food and responded by purring loudly, arching its back, and rubbing against his leg. Elspeth, meantime, was idly watching a lone figure who had turned the corner onto their street, shoulders hunched, and head bent against the wind.

  “It’s Papa!” she said to Robbie. “Here’s Papa! I wonder why he’s home so early.”

  Robbie immediately forgot the cat. Unmindful of the rain, he and Elspeth ran to meet their father.

  “What are you bairns doing outside on a day like this?” Papa asked, drawing Robbie under the flap of his coat. “You’ll catch your death of cold, the pair of you. Come on home with you!” But he was glad of their welcome.

  “You’re early, Papa,” Elspeth said, looking up at him, her wide gray eyes anxious. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “Not a thing!” Papa answered. “It’s good news I’m bringing. And pies for supper!”

  He handed Elspeth the bag he was carrying. Elspeth smiled at him, reassured. Something exciting must have happened, right enough, for him to be bringing hot pies home from the bakers and it not even payday!

  It wasn’t until after supper was eaten and the table cleared that Papa finally told them his news. Pulling a pamphlet from his pocket, he spread it out on the table and asked, “How would you like to go to Canada and take up farming again, Margaret?”

  “Canada!” Mama repeated quietly. “But how would we pay for it?”

  “I’ve got a bit put by,” Papa said. “And the land is free. Just imagine! A hundred and sixty acres of good farmland, and all we have to do to make it ours is to live there on it for three years.”

  “But we’d need a house to live in,” Mama said.

  “We’ll build it ourselves. And we’ll have help getting started. This man—the Reverend Isaac Moses Barr—has already obtained land along the North Saskatchewan River from the Canadian government, and he wants to take a group of settlers out there. He’ll arrange for supplies and for tents till we get the houses built, and he’ll see to it that there are roads and churches and schools for the children.”

  “But, Duncan, it’s so far away,” Mama said, shaking her head slowly. Her hair fell forward over her thin face, hiding the bleak expression in her eyes.

  “We have Donald and Maud out there,” Papa said encouragingly. “It will be good to see Donald again and find out how things are going.”

  “He could have written,” said Mama.

  “Maud sent us that letter from Manitoba. Donald’s likely too busy to write, with all those acres to farm.”

  Papa didn’t say—as he might have done—that the main reason Donald didn’t write was because it would be too much effor
t. Neither Papa not his brother Donald had had much chance to go to school when they were children living on a remote farm in the Highlands. Papa often said that the best thing about coming to Glasgow had been that Elspeth had learned reading and writing and arithmetic, and that soon Rob, too, would go to school.

  “When would we go?” Mama asked, and then was shaken by a bout of coughing.

  “Early in the spring so that we can get a crop in the first year,” Papa answered. “They say that the sun always shines there, even in winter. You’ll feel so much better away from the rain and damp of Scotland, Margaret. It’s that as much as anything that makes me think we should go.”

  Elspeth’s eyes were bright with excitement as she listened to every word Papa said. To be back on a farm again, Mama well, and Papa doing the kind of work he wanted to do, their own home, their own land, and maybe a dog for wee Rob . . . .

  As if reading her thoughts, Rob climbed onto Papa’s knee and asked, “Can I have a dog when we get to the farm?”

  “We’ll need a dog on the farm right enough, to chase the cows over all those acres,” Papa answered.

  “But can it be my dog?” Robbie persisted.

  “Maybe it will, or maybe you’ll have a calf of your own. Elspeth used to have a calf up on the croft by Loch Nevis.”

  “And do you remember Fleecy?” Mama asked with a smile. “That great sheep that thought she was one of the family.”

  “I raised Fleecy from a newborn lamb,” Elspeth told Robbie. “She lived in the kitchen when she was little, and she never did take to the outdoors, or to other sheep.”

  “Do you remember how she liked it when we sang ‘Bonny Doon’?” Mama said, humming a few bars of the melody.

  It was good to hear Mama sing again. She must like the idea of Canada, Elspeth thought.

  “I’d rather have a calf than a sheep,” Robbie declared. “Then I’ll get milk. A wee calf called Jock.”

  “You’ll not get much milk from a calf called Jock,” Elspeth said with a burst of laughter, and even Mama and Papa joined in.

  Robbie, who didn’t like being laughed at, especially by Elspeth, turned red and his lower lip trembled.

  Papa came quickly to his defense. “Rob’s going to make a fine farmer. He’s good with animals, and he accepts what happens and makes the best of it. You need to be able to do that in farming. You, Elspeth, would sooner bend things to your own way.”

  “And isn’t that what you’ve done, Papa?” Elspeth challenged. “You didn’t just accept losing the croft, or we wouldn’t be talking about going to Canada now.”

  “Maybe so,” Papa agreed. “But then, I’ve worked for this. It has taken time and planning. Here, lass, read us some of what Isaac Barr says in this bit of paper of his.”

  Elspeth looked at the pamphlet that her father handed her. There were a lot of big words and flowery phrases describing the advantages of the settlement that Barr was proposing. Her eyes lighted on one paragraph near the end. Clearing her throat, she began to read hesitantly, but as she read her voice gained in confidence.

  “’I do not desire to present a picture that is highly rose-colored. There are difficulties and drawbacks to be encountered, but for the brave most obstacles are something to be overcome and steppingstones to victory and success. Let me say, in brief, you cannot pick up nuggets of gold on the surface of the soil; you must dig for the wealth of the land. Hard work and plenty of it lies before you, more or less of hardship. And not seldom privations. You must sometimes sweat, and sometimes you must suffer from cold. If you are afraid, stay at home—don’t come to Canada. It is a land of brave and conquering men.’”

  As she read the last words he looked at Papa with a shining face. A land for the brave!

  Chapter 2

  “Sometimes you must suffer”

  MARCH, 1903

  The MacDonalds had no property to dispose of, no relatives to worry about, and very few possessions to pack; and so they gave their time to dreaming and planning—and it was mostly dreaming, because they had little foundation for planning. Elspeth read Mr. Barr’s pamphlets all the way through. The promises of blue skies and broad fields of rippling golden grain pierced the drabness of the cold, wet winter evenings. Papa told boisterous stories of the days when he and Donald were lads of the farm, and Mama sang songs that Elspeth had not heard since they lived on the croft.

  On the third day of March, running home from school, Elspeth felt a new warmth in the sun and a softness in the breeze that spoke of the coming of spring, although there were no trees or flowers on their street to mark the changing seasons. Elspeth no longer noticed the confining gray buildings. In less than a month she would be on her way to Canada, the land of sunshine and green, fertile plains.

  In school that day Miss Johnstone had been talking about Canada. She had shown them pictures of lakes as big as the ocean and a tremendous waterfall called Niagara Falls. Elspeth clattered up the stone stairs eager to tell Mama all about it, but when she opened the door she was shocked to find that the room was full of people—neighbors she scarcely knew, all talking together in hushed tones but with an undercurrent of excitement in their voices. They fell silent when they saw her in the doorway. Elspeth wanted to turn and run away, but instead she had to listen to Mrs. Copeland from across the stair saying awful things—things that couldn’t be true. Papa had been hurt at the shipyards . . . falling scaffolding . . . he wouldn’t get better . . . Mama had gone to see him. . . .

  Then Mama came home, and Elspeth knew that all that Mrs. Copeland had said was true—and more. Papa was dead. Mama’s face was shriveled, and her eyes had lost their luster the way seashells do when they lie forgotten on a dusty shelf. She had no words of comfort for Elspeth, and Elspeth had none for her. The neighbors brought them supper, but only wee Rob ate.

  Papa was buried in St. Andrew’s churchyard. Mrs. Copeland minded Robbie while Elspeth and her mother went with a small group of mourners to the cemetery. The hint of spring a few days earlier was gone. Rain fell steadily from a slate-gray sky. Gusts of wind, funneling between the church and a high stone wall, snatched away the words of the minister. But no words could have soothed Elspeth as she watched her father’s coffin lowered into that barren ground—so far from the heathered hill behind the croft and the fertile soil of Canada with all its promises.

  Mama came home from the funeral chilled and weak. The cough that had plagued her all winter was much worse, and she didn’t seem to have the strength to care what would happen to them now. When Elspeth tried to ask her, she turned away. So Elspeth kept Robbie quiet and made meals that her mother could not eat. She kept asking Mama if she should fetch the doctor, until Mama finally gave in and told her to bring him.

  When the doctor came, he listened to Mama’s chest and then told Elspeth he was going to take her mother to the hospital. Elspeth had thought that Robbie was hardly aware of what was happening, but now he clung to Mama, not wanting her to go away.

  “We’ll make your ma better,” the doctor promised Robbie, prying his fingers loose from the bedclothes. Turning to Elspeth, he said, “You can help by looking after your little brother.”

  ”Aye, take care of wee Rob,” Mama whispered hoarsely. “You mustn’t let them take him away.”

  “I won’t,” agreed Elspeth, not knowing who would want to take him away.

  Her mother seemed to sense that Elspeth didn’t understand. Struggling, she raised herself on her elbow and said feverishly, “Don’t let them take him. You are to stay together. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll look after him, I promise,” Elspeth said. After all, she was quite used to minding Rob while their mother was sick. She had done it many times before.

  One evening, a week later, the doctor came to the door. He was the same doctor who had promised he’d make Mama better. In halting words, he told them that mama had died. “Do you have any relatives?” he asked.

  “There’s Uncle Donald and Aunt Maud,” Elspeth whispered. She did not s
ay that they lived in Canada. She did not tell him that she didn’t have their address.

  During the week that followed, Elspeth was numb with grief and resentment. Perhaps if she had cried, the neighbors who came to see them, sometimes bringing them meals and shaking their heads and clucking over “the poor orphan bairns,” would have understood her better. But she scowled at them wordlessly, her face pale and pinched, her eyes dry. She brooded over the unfairness of it all.

  Robbie cried and whined constantly, wanting Mama and Papa. He couldn’t seem to realize they were dead. Elspeth was angry with him for still hoping they would come back and everything would be all right again. Yet she, too, listened for Papa’s footsteps on the stairs and wakened in the night wondering if Mama needed her. Each morning, when she first woke up, she struggled to escape from the sorrow that had invaded her dreams, only to find it was in her waking life too. She understood now why Mama hadn’t wanted to talk about what would happen to them. Elspeth no longer cared either.

  After the initial rush of sympathy from the neighbors, no one knew what to do about them. Someone finally called in a social worker. She came to the house late one afternoon, a stiff-starched woman, and told Elspeth that a place had been found for her to work as a maid. She said that Robbie would have to go to an orphanage.

  “I had thought you would be bigger,” the woman said, looking down disapprovingly at Elspeth. “They told me you were fourteen.”

  “Thirteen, ma’am,” Elspeth said.

  The woman studied Elspeth standing in the middle of the room with Rob beside her. Even for thirteen she was small and slight, and her coarse brown woolen dress hung loose in all the wrong places, making her look smaller. Her dark hair was pulled back from her forehead, sharpening her narrow face. Her thick-lashed, wide gray eyes looked dull and defeated.

  “I wish you were stronger-looking,” the woman said. “But if you are a willing worker, then I’m sure they’ll take you. It’s a live-in position, so that solves a lot of problems for you.”

  “We are to stay together,” Elspeth said, reaching out and taking Robbie by the hand.