Chapter 31 Donald and Dorothy by Mary Mapes Dodge
ONLY A BIT OF RAG
Dorry's long letter reached Donald two weeks later, as he sat in his room at a hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle. He had been feeling lonely and rather discouraged, notwithstanding the many sights that had interested him during the day. And after many disappointments and necessary delays in the prosecution of the business that had taken him across the sea, he had begun to feel that, perhaps, it would be just as well to sail for home and let things go on as before. Dorry, he thought, need never know of the doubts and anxieties that had troubled Uncle George and himself, and for his part he would rest in his belief that he and she were Wolcott Reed's own children, joint heirs to the estate, and, as Liddy had so often called them, "the happiest pair of twins in the world."
But Dot's letter changed everything. Now that she knew all, he would not rest a day even, till her identity was proved beyond a possibility of doubt. But how to do it? No matter; do it he would, if it were in the power of man. (Donald in these days felt at least twenty years old.) Dorry's words had fired his courage anew. As he looked out upon the starry night, over the roof-peaks of the quaint old city, he felt like a Crusader, and Dorothy's happiness was his Holy-land, to be rescued from all invaders. The spirit of grand old Charlemagne, whose bones were in the Cathedral close by, was not more resolute than Donald's was now.
All this and more he told her in his letter written that night, but the "more" did not include the experiences of the past twelve hours of daylight. He did not tell her how he had that day, with much difficulty, found the Prussian physician who had attended his father, Wolcott Reed, in his last illness, and how very hard it had been to make the old man even remember the family, and how little information, after all, he had been able to obtain.
"Vifteen year vas a long dime, eh?" the doctor had said in his broken English, and as for "dose dwin bapies," he could recall "nod-ings aboud dot at all."
But Don's letter suited Dorothy admirably, and in its sturdy helpfulness and cheer, and its off-hand, picturesque account of his adventures, it quite consoled her for the disappointment of not reading the letter that she was positively sure came to Mr. Reed by the same steamer.
The full story of Donald's journey, with all its varied incidents up to this period, would be too long to tell here. But the main points must be mentioned.
Immediately upon landing at Liverpool, Donald had begun his search for the missing Ellen Lee, who, if she could be found, surely would be able to help him, he thought. From all that Mr. Reed had been able to learn previously, she undoubtedly had been Mrs. Wolcott Reed's maid, and had taken charge of the twins on board of the fated vessel. Soon after the shipwreck she had been traced to Liverpool, as the reader knows, and had disappeared at that time, before Mr. Reed's clerk, Henry Wakeley, could see her. But fifteen years had elapsed since then. Donald found the house in Liverpool where she had been, but could gain there no information whatever. The house had changed owners, and its former occupants had scattered, no one could say whither. But, by a persistent search among the neighboring houses, he did find a bright motherly woman, who, more than fifteen years before, had come, a bride, to live in an opposite house, and who well remembered a tall, dark-complexioned young woman sitting one night on the steps of the shabby boarding-house over the way. Some one had told her that this young woman had just been saved from a shipwreck, and had lost everything but the clothes she wore; and from sheer sympathy she, the young wife, had gone across the street to speak to her. She had found her, at first, sullen and uncommunicative. "The girl was a foreigner," said the long-ago bride, now a blooming matron with four children. "Leastwise, though she understood me and gave me short answers in English, it struck me she was French-born. Her black stuff gown was dreadful torn and ruined by the sea-water, sir, and so, as I was about her height, I made bold to offer her one of mine in its place. I had a plenty then, and me and my young man was accounted comfortable from the start. She shook her head and muttered something about 'not bein' a beggar,' but do you know, sir, that the next day she come over to me, as I was knitting at my little window, and says she, 'I go on to London,' she says, 'and I'll take that now, if you be pleased,' or something that way, I don't remember her words; and so I showed her into my back room and put the fresh print gown on her. I can see her now a-takin' the things out of her own gown and pinning them so careful into the new pocket, because it wasn't so deep and safe as the one in her old gown was; and then, tearin' off loose tatters of the black skirt and throwing them down careless-like, she rolled it up tight, and went off with it, a-noddin' her head and a-maircying me in French, as pretty as could be. I can't bring to mind a feature of her, exceptin' the thick, black hair, and her bein' about my own size. I was slender then, young master; fifteen years makes—"
"And those bits of the old gown," interrupted Donald eagerly, "where are they? Did you save them?"
"Laws, no, young gentleman, not I. They went into my rag-bag, like as not, and are all thrown away and lost, sir, many a day agone, for that matter."
"I am sorry," said Donald. "Even a scrap of her gown might possibly be of value to me."
"Was she belonging to your family?" asked the woman, doubtfully.
Donald partly explained why he wished to find Ellen Lee; and asked if the girl had said anything to her of the wreck, or of two babies.
"Not a word, sir, not a word; though I tried to draw her into talkin'. It's very little she said, at best; she was a-grumpy-like."
"What about that rag-bag?" asked Donald, returning to his former train of thought. "Have you the same one yet?"
"That I have," she answered, laughing; "and likely to have it for many a year to come. My good mother made it for me when I was married, and so I've kept it and patched it till it's like Joseph's coat; and useful enough it's been, too—holding many a bit that's done service to me and my little romps. 'Keep a thing seven year,' my mother used to say, 'keep it seven year an' turn it, an' seven year again, an' it'll come into play at last.'"
"Why may you not have saved that tatter of the old gown twice seven years, then?" persisted Donald.
"Why, bless you, young sir, there's no knowin' as to that. But you couldn't find it, if I had. For why? the black pieces, good, bad, and indifferent, are all in one roll together, and you nor I couldn't tell which it was."
"Likely enough," said Donald, in a disappointed tone; "and yet, could you—that is—really, if you wouldn't mind, I'd thank you very much if we could look through that rag-bag together."
"Mercy on us!" exclaimed the woman, seized with a sudden dread that her young visitor might not be in his right senses.
"If I could find those pieces of black stuff," he urged, significantly, "it would be worth a golden guinea to me."
Sure, now, that he was a downright lunatic, she moved back from him with a frightened gesture; but glancing again at his bright, manly face, she said in a different tone:
"And it would be worth a golden guinea to me, young master, just to have the joy of finding them for you. Step right into this room, sir, and you, Nancy and Tom" (to a shy little pair who had been sitting, unobserved, on the lowest step of the clean, bare stairway), "you run up and drag the old piece-bag down to Mother. You shall have your way, young gentleman—though it's the oddest thing that ever happened to me."
The huge bag soon came tumbling down the stairs, with soft thuds; but the little forms that, for the time, had given it life and motion, did not appear. Donald gladly drew it into the little room, where his hostess soon extracted from its depths a portly black roll.
Alas! To the boyish mind a bundle made of scores of different sorts of black pieces rolled together is anything but expressive. On first opening it, Donald looked hopelessly at the motley heap; but the kind woman helped him somewhat by rapidly throwing piece after piece aside, with, "That can't be it—that's like little Tom's trousers;" "Nor that,—that's what I wore for poor mother;" "Nor that—that's to mend my John's Sunday coat;" and so on, till there were not more than a dozen scraps left. Of these, three showed that they had been cut with a pair of scissors, but the others were torn pieces, and of different kinds of black goods. Don felt these pieces, held them up to the light, and in despair, was just going to beg her to let him have them all for future investigation, when his face suddenly brightened.
Putting one of the pieces between his lips, he shook his head with rather a disgusted expression, as though the flavor were anything but agreeable, then tried another and another (the woman meantime regarding him with speechless amazement), till at last, holding out a strip and smacking his lips, he exclaimed:
"I have it! This is it! It's as salt as brine!"
"Good land!" she cried; "salt! who ever heard of such a thing,—and in my rag-bag? How could that be?"
Don paid no attention to her. Tasting another piece, that proved on closer examination to be of the same material, he found it to be equally salt.
His face displayed a comical mixture of nausea and delight as he sprang to his feet, crying out:
"Oh! ma'am, I can never thank you enough. These are the pieces of Ellen Lee's gown, I am confident—unless they have been salted in some way since you've had them."
"Not they, sir; I can warrant that. But who under the canopy ever thought of the taste of a shipwrecked gown before!"
"Smell these," he said, holding the pieces toward her. "Don't you notice a sort of salt-sea odor about them?"
"Not a bit," she answered, emphatically, shaking her head. Then, still cautiously sniffing at the pieces, she added: "Indeed and I do fancy so now. It's faint, but it's there, sir. Fifteen years ago! How salt does cling to things! The poor woman must have been pulled out of the very sea!"
"That doesn't follow," remarked Donald: "her skirt might have been soaked by the splashing of the waves after she was let down into the small boat."
Donald talked a while longer with his new acquaintance, but finally bade her good-day, first, however, writing down the number of her house, and giving her his address, and begging her to let him know if, at any time, she and her husband should move from that neighborhood.
"Should what, sir?"
"Should move—go to live in another place."
"Not we," she replied, proudly. "We live here, we do sir, John and myself, and the four children. His work's near by, and here we'll be for many's the day yet, the Lord willing. No, no, please never think of such a thing as that," she continued, as Donald diffidently thrust his hand into his pocket. "Take the cloth with you, sir, and welcome; but my children shall never have it to say that their mother took pay for three old pieces of cloth—no, nor for showing kindness either" (as Don politely put in a word), "above all things, not for kindness. God bless you, young master, an' help you in findin' her—that's all I can say, and a good-day to you."
"That French nurse probably went home again to France," mused Donald, after gratefully taking leave of the good woman and her rag-bag. "As we twins were born at Aix-la-Chapelle, in Prussia, most likely mother obtained a nurse there. But it needn't have been a Prussian nurse. It was this same French girl, I warrant. Yes, and this French nurse very naturally found her way back to France after she was landed at Liverpool. But, for all that, I may find some clew to her at Aix-la-Chapelle."
Before going to that interesting old Prussian city, however, he decided to proceed to London and see what could be ascertained there. In London, though he obtained the aid of one James Wogg, a detective, he could find no trace of the missing Ellen Lee. But the detective's quick sense drew enough from Donald's story of the buxom matron and the two gowns to warrant his going to Liverpool, "if the young gent so ordered, to work up the search."
"Had the young gent thought to ask for a bit like the new gown that was put onto Ellen Lee? No? Well, that always was the way with unprofessionals—not to say the young gent hadn't been uncommon sharp, as it was."
Donald, pocketing his share of the compliment, heartily accepted the detective's services, after making a careful agreement as to the scale of expenses, and giving, by the aid of his guide-book, the name of the hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle where a letter from the detective would reach him. He also prepared an advertisement "on a new principle," as he explained to the detective, very much to that worthy's admiration. "Ellen Lee has been advertised for again and again," he said, "and promised to be told 'something to her advantage;' but if still alive, she evidently has some reason for hiding. It is possible that it might have been she who threw the two babies from the sinking ship into the little boat, and as news of the rescue of all in that boat may never have reached her, she all this time may have feared that she would be blamed or made to suffer in some way for what she had done. I mean to advertise," continued Donald to the detective, "that information is wanted of a Frenchwoman, Ellen Lee, by the two babies whose lives she saved at sea, and who, by addressing so-and-so, can learn of something to her advantage,—and we'll see what will come of it."
"Not so," suggested Mr. Wogg. "It's a good dodge; but say, rather, 'by two young persons whose lives she saved when they were babies;' there's more force to it that way. And leave out 'at sea;' it gives too much to the other party. Best have 'em address 'Mr. James Wogg, Old Bailey, N. London.'" But Donald would not agree to this last point.
Consequently, after much painstaking on the part of Donald and Mr. Wogg, the following advertisement appeared in the London and Liverpool papers:—
IF ELLEN LEE, A FRENCHWOMAN, WILL KINDLY SEND her address to D. R., in care of Dubigk's Hotel, Aix-la-Chapelle, Prussia, she shall receive the grateful thanks of two young persons whose lives she saved when they were infants, and hear of something greatly to her advantage.
Again Ellen Lees, evidently not French, came into view, lured by the vague terms of the advertisement, but as quickly disappeared under the detective's searching inspection; and again it seemed as if that particular Ellen Lee, as Mr. Reed had surmised, had vanished from the earth. But Mr. Wogg assured his client that it took time for an advertisement to make its way into the rural districts of England, and he must be patient.
Donald, therefore, proceeded at once to Dover, on the English coast, thence sailed over to Ostend, in Belgium, and from there went by railway to his birthplace, Aix-la-Chapelle. As his parents had settled there three months before his mother started for home, he felt that, in every respect, this was the most promising place for his search. He had called upon George Robertson's few family connections in London, but they knew very little about that gentleman, excepting that when very young he had gone to America to seek his fortune; that in time he had married a well-to-do young American lady and had then come back to settle in England; that he soon had lost everything, being very reckless and unfortunate in business; that his wife, in her poverty, had received help from somebody travelling in Prussia; and that the couple had been sent for to meet this friend or relative at Havre, when his little girl was not two months old, and all had sailed for America together. Donald knew as much as this already. If, fifteen years before, they could give Mr. Reed no description of the baby, they certainly could give Donald no satisfaction now. So far from gathering from them any new facts of importance, in regard to their lost kinsman and his wife and child, they had all this time, as Donald wrote to Mr. Reed, been very active in forgetting him and his affairs. Still, Donald succeeded in reviving their old promise that, if anything should turn up that would throw any light on the history of "poor Robertson's" family, they would lose no time in communicating the fact—this time to Mr. Reed's nephew, Donald.
No word had been heard from them up to the evening that Dorothy's letter arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle; no satisfactory response, either, had been called forth by the Ellen Lee advertisement; and Donald, who had had, as we know, a disappointing interview with his father's physician, was weary and almost discouraged. Moreover, every effort to find the store at which the gold chain had been purchased was in vain. But now that Dorothy's letter had come, bringing him new energy and courage, the outlook was brighter. There still were many plans to try. Surely some of them must succeed. In the first place, he would translate his Ellen-Lee advertisement into French, and insert it in Paris and Aix-la-Chapelle newspapers. Strange that no one had thought of doing this before. Then he would—no, he wouldn't—but, on the other hand, why not send—And at this misty point of his meditations he fell asleep, to dream, not as one would suppose, of Dorothy, but of the grand Cathedral standing in place of the Chapel from which this special Aix obtained its name; of the wonderful hot springs in the public street; of the baths, the music, and the general stir and brightness of this fascinating old Prussian city.