David's Little Lad

“Oh! Nan, is it possible? Is it possible that they’ll all be saved? Oh! I cannot believe it!” and I burst into tears.

“Now isn’t that wrong and faithless?” said the little girl, taking my hand. “Ain’t this a time to exercise faith? Why, there ain’t a man there – no, not a man, as won’t work with a will. Why, when father come up, he had the blood streaming from his hands. I tell you, Miss Morgan, there’s no halting when we looks to bring h’out our brothers and sons!”

“Then, Nan, they may be out to-night?”

“No, Miss; that ain’t likely – we mustn’t look for impossibles. They are in a stall a long way off, called Thomas Powell’s stall; and to get to that, they must work through thirty-eight yards of coal. That ain’t light labour; but h’everything that men can do will be done. Why, engineers and miners from all the collieries round are on the spot.”

“Nan,” I said, “I think I will ask God for one thing. I don’t mind telling you, but I have been feeling very bitter against God; but now if He brings me back David and Owen – both of them safe and well – why, then, I will love Him and serve Him always.”

Nan was silent for a long time – some thought knitting anxiously her dark brows.

“I don’t think I’d make a bargain with the Lord,” she said.

“Oh! but, Nan, you cannot quite understand; I have never told you the story of my life. I see now that I never cared for either Owen or David quite in the right way. I want to change all that. Yes,” I added, humbly, “I have a great deal to change. I had a beautiful home before I came here; and I grew so tired of it, I wanted to leave it. I know I vexed David – dear, dear David, by wishing to leave Tynycymmer; and then we came here; and he asked me to try, in the little ways a sister can, to help Owen; but I didn’t. Oh! Nan, I have not been at all good, and I want to change all that.”

“Well, Miss Morgan, from your own words, it seems to me you have a deal to ask the Lord to forgive you.”

“Yes, I know I have,” I added, humbly.

“Then why don’t you ask to be forgiven now – right away?”

“No, I cannot ask now. God is punishing me too hard. I don’t love Him now at all.”

“You want the lads home first?”

“Oh! yes, indeed. Oh! if I might hope for that, I could love Him – I could serve Him well.”

“Eh! dear,” said little Nan, “I think I could love Him, even if Miles was gone to Him. Seems to me, for all I’m so timmersome, and I does cling so to Miles, that even if Miles was dead, I could love the Lord. I think father and me, for all we’d grieve bitter, we’d never turn agen the Lord. Why, the Lord’s our guide, Miss Morgan; and however rough the way, we’d rayther go that road with Him, than any other in the world without Him. And father and me, we’d soon see that having Miles up in the better land, only ’ud make it more home like. Oh! Miss Morgan, it don’t seem to me that yours is a bit the right way.”

That night the doctor gave mother a composing draught. She had not slept for two nights; and the sleeplessness, added to her anxiety, had brought on feverish symptoms. Happen what might, sleep was necessary for her, and she was now in bed, wrapped in heavy slumber. After doing what he could for mother, the doctor looked hard into my eyes, but I assured him I was well, which was true – for in body I never felt better. He made me promise, however, to go to bed. I agreed to do so, though sleep seemed very far away. The night was still early, and for an hour or two longer I would sit by the dining-room fire. As mother had done two nights before, I made down a good fire, then sat opposite to it. I sat with my head pressed on my hands, my eyes gazing into the ruddy flames, my thoughts very busy. My thoughts were troublesome – almost agonising. For the first time in my life, my will and God’s were standing opposite to one another, opposing one another in grim conflict. My young desire dared to stand up and defy its Creator. The Creator said to the thing that He had made, “My will be done.”

The tiny atom replied, “No; not Thy will, but mine.”

Thus we were at variance – God and I. I knew I must submit – that God could sweep me aside to perform, independent of me, what seemed good to Him. He could do this, but still my will might rise in rebellion, might dash itself out and die against this rock; but never, no, never submit. I was quite ready, as little Nan had expressed it, to make a bargain with God. I was ready to sell my submission at a fair price. If He left to me that for which my soul longed, then my soul, with its treasures, should be His. But without them – empty, torn, and bare; could that soul go to Him? – go to Him in its desolation, and say, “You, who have taken what I love, who have emptied me in my youth of all light and joy, take me too, and do with me what you will.” This I could not do – this deed of submission I could not perform. No, if God would be good to me, I would be good to Him – that was my rebellious thought. No wonder it brought me no rest. No wonder I was tossed about by this wind of desolation; and the Lord – the Lord whom I needed, the Lord who, though I knew it not, was wounding but to heal; slaying, to make me truly live – the Lord was not in the wind. I was sitting so, thinking these thoughts, wondering why trouble had awakened all these depths in me – why I, who only six months ago had been, in every sense, a child, should now feel so old and heavy at heart – when at the window of the room where I was sitting there came a very low tap. At another time such a sound, in the stillness of the night, would have frightened me; but not so now. I went directly to the window, and looked out; then, indeed, my heavy heart gave a bound, for Owen stood without. I could not raise the sash of the window without the possibility of awaking mother; but I went to the front door, and managed softly to open it.

“Is my mother up? Gwladys.”

“No, no, Owen,” clasping his hands, and trying to drag him over the threshold. “She is worn out – she is in bed, and asleep. Come in, dear Owen.”

“No one is up but you?”

“Not a soul.”

“Then I will come to the fire for a moment. I am bitterly cold; and could you get me something to eat?”

He crossed the threshold, entered the dining-room – shading his eyes from the light – and threw himself, with the air of one utterly spent, into the arm-chair. So worn and miserable was he, physically, that my first thought – my first thought before I could ask him a single question – was to see to his bodily comforts. I got him food and wine, then going on my knees, I unlaced and removed, as well as I could, his wet and mud-covered boots, went softly upstairs for clean, dry socks, and his favourite slippers. He did not oppose me by a single remark, he submitted to my attentions, ate eagerly and hungrily of the food I gave him. When I had done all I could, I sat down on the floor by his side, and took his hand. I must now begin to question him, for the silence between us, with my ignorance of what he did or did not know, was becoming unbearable.

“Where have you been? Owen. We have wanted you here so dreadfully.”

“Have you? I should have been no use to you. For the last two days I have been mad – that was all.” He looked like it now. His eyes bloodshot, his face deadly pale.

“But, brother,” I said, impelled to say the words, “our David has quite forgiven you.”

“Good God! Gwladys,” starting upright, “do you want to put me on the rack? How dare you mention his name. His name, and the name of his murdered child! Oh! my God! how that little face haunts me!”

He began to pace up and down the room. I feared he would wake mother; but in his passion and agony I could do nothing to restrain him. After a time, however, he sat down more quietly.

“Yes; I have been mad, or perhaps, I am sane now, and was mad all the rest of my life. In my sanity, or madness – call it what you will – I at last see myself. How dared you and mother pamper and spoil me when I was a boy! How dared you foster my be setting sin, my weak ambition, my overweening vanity. I never loved you for that– never. I cared most for David. How could I help it – righteous, humble, noble; judging calmly and correctly; telling me my faults. But, there! how I must blame others, and lay the sin on others. I did love you, my dear,” – laying his hand for an instant on my head – “I used to dream of you when, like the prodigal, I lived in the far country; but, as I say again, what of that! I went to Oxford – oh! it is a long story, a story of sin upon sin. My vanity, fed by petty adulation. I spent money. I got into debt, frightfully – frightfully. I did worse. I got amongst a fast set, and became the fastest of them all. At last came the crisis. I won’t tell you of it. Why should you know? But for David, I should have been publicly disgraced – think of that! Your ‘hero’ brother – you used to say that of me – the conceited lad who thought the world hardly vast enough or grand enough to hold him. David, as I say, saved me. He paid all my debts – he set me free. My debts were enormous; to pay them the estate was seriously crippled. I went abroad. I thought myself humbled then. I did not care what I put my hand to. I had one dream, to fulfil that I lived. I meant to pay back to David the money he had spent on me. I knew of this mine on his property. I knew it was badly worked; that the profits, which might be enormous, were very small. I thought this mine might prove my El Dorado; might give to me the golden treasure I needed. I always meant to be a civil engineer; to this purpose I had turned my attention during my short periods of real work at Christ Church. Now I determined to take up engineering with a will. I did this because I knew that it would qualify me to have the direction of David’s mine – to get out of David’s mine the gold I needed. For four years I worked for this. I gained practical knowledge; then I came here – you know that part of the story. I told David of my hopes; they excited no pleasure in him. He begged of me to make the mine safe; to use my skill in saving life. I promised him. I meant to perform my word. I did not think I should fail bitterly and utterly a second time. I did not suppose, when long ago I dreamed dreams, and saw visions, that I should rob David, first of his gold, and then of his child; and this last is murder.”

Owen paused here, and wiped some great drops from his brow. “Gwladys,” he continued, “I see myself now. I am sane, not mad. I see myself at last. I am the greatest sinner in the world.”

He paused again; these words have been used hypocritically; but there was no hypocrisy in that voice – in those eyes then; the solemn, slow denunciation came with the full approval of the heart and reason. I could not contradict. I was silent. “Yes,” he repeated, “I have come to that – come down to that – to be a murderer – the lowest of all. I am the greatest sinner in the world; and for two days I have been looking at God, and God has been looking at me. Face to face – with that murdered child, and all my other crimes between us – we have been viewing each other. Is it any wonder I should tell you I have been mad?”

“You may be facing God,” I said, slowly then. “You may be facing God with all your sins; but you must remember one thing: you, a sinner, are facing a God who died for such as you.”

I don’t know why I said these words; they seemed to be sent to me. I appeared to be speaking outside myself.

“Thank you,” said Owen. Then he covered his face, and was silent for a quarter of an hour; and in that interval of quiet, the knowledge came to me that this penitent, broken man – this agonised, stricken soul, was nearer, far nearer to God than I was. At the end of a quarter of an hour, Owen rose to his feet.

“I heard of the mine accident at a roadside inn, this afternoon; that brought me home. I cannot understand how the water burst in. I had no idea there was an accumulation of water in Pride’s Pit. I thought it was properly pumped away – but, there! I should have known. I am going down into the mine at once. I know David is in the mine.”

“Owen,” I said, suddenly remembering, “David sent you that.” I put the little note, which David had written, into his hands.

He read it, then threw it, open, on the table.

The hard look was gone from his eyes – they were glistening.

“Farewell, dear, I am going to my duty. God helping me, I will save David or die.”

Before I could say a word, he was out of the house; before I could call to him, his footsteps had died away on the night air.

I threw myself on my knees. I did not pray in words, but I prayed in floods of healing tears. Then I read David’s letter.

“Owen, there are two sides to everything. What has happened is not bad for my little lad. God has taken him – it must be good for my child to be with God. I try to fix my mind on this thought. I ask you to try to do the same. I know this is hard.

“Owen, you have been careless, and have sinned, and your sin has been punished. The punishment is all the worse for you, because it crushes me. It shall not quite crush me, Owen; I will rise above it. My dear brother, don’t despair. If I can and do forgive you, with all my heart, so assuredly will God.

“But, Owen, you are cowardly to shirk your duty. There is danger in the mine. As soon as ever you get this come to me there. Be brave! Whatever you feel, do your duty like a man, for my sake, and for God’s sake.

“David.”

Chapter Twenty Two

The Lord was not in the Fire

And now, day after day, heroic men worked nobly. Without a thought of personal danger, engineers, viewers, managers, miners, private gentlemen, – all laboured for the common cause.

Brothers were perishing of slow starvation, that was enough; brothers, come what might, would go to their rescue.