David's Little Lad
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From my fancied woes, I was to plunge into the stern reality, and it was all to begin to-day. When we got into the train, and were whirling away in the direction of that border county, which was to represent England to me, my excitement had so far toned down as to allow me to observe David, and David’s face gave to my sensations a feeling scarcely of uneasiness, but scarcely, either, of added joy. Any one who did not know him intimately, would have said what a happy, genial-looking man my brother was. Not a wrinkle showed on his broad forehead, and no shadow lurked in his kind eyes; but I, who knew him, recognised an expression which had come into his face once or twice, but was hardly habitual to it. I could not have told, on that summer morning, what the expression meant, or what it testified. I could not have read it in my childish joy; but now, in the sober light of memory, I recall David’s face as it looked on that September day, and in the knowledge born of my sorrow, I can tell something of its story.
My brother had looked like this twice before – once on his unexpected return from Oxford; once, more strongly, when Amy died. The look on David’s face to-day, was the look born of a resolution – the resolution of a strong man to do his duty, at the risk of personal pain. As I said, I read nothing of this at the time; but his face touched me. I remembered that I had rather pained him last night. We had the carriage to ourselves. I bent forward and kissed him; tossed my hat off, and laid my head against his breast. In this attitude, I raised to him the happiest of faces, and spoke the happiest of words.
“David, the world is just delicious, and I do love you.”
David, a man of few words, responded with a smile, and his invariable expression —
“That’s right, little woman.”
After a time, he began to speak of the festival.
He had been at the last celebration of the Three Choirs at Hereford. He told me a few of his sensations then, and also something of what he felt yesterday; he had a true Welshman’s love of music, and he spoke enthusiastically.
“Yes, Gwladys, it lifts one up,” he said, in conclusion, “I’d like to listen to those choirs in the old cathedral, or go to the top of the Brecon – ’tis much the same, the sensation, I mean – they both lift one into finer air. And what a grand thing that is, little woman,” he added, “I mean when anything lifts us right out of ourselves. I mean when we cease to look down at our feet, and cease to look for ever at our own poor sorrows, and gaze right straight away from them all into the face of God.”
“Yes,” I said, in a puzzled voice, for of course I knew nothing of these sensations; then, still in my childish manner, “I expect to enjoy it beyond anything; for you know, David, I have never been in any cathedral except Llandaff, and I have never heard the ‘Messiah.’”
“Well, my dear, you will enjoy it to-day; but more the second time, I doubt not.”
“Why? David.”
“Because there are depths in it, which life must teach you to understand.”
“But, dear David, I often have had such sad thoughts.”
“Poor child!” a touch of his hand on my head, then no more words from either of us.
Just before we reached Hereford, as I was drawing on my long white gloves, which I had thrown aside as an unpleasant restraint during the journey, David said one thing more, “When the service is over, Gwladys, we will walk round the Close, if you don’t mind, for I have got something I want to tell you.”
It darted into my head, at these words, that perhaps I was going to London after all. The thought remained for only an instant, it was quickly crowded out, with the host of new sensations which all compressed themselves into the next few hours.
No, I shall never forget it, when I have grey hairs I shall remember it. I may marry some day, and have children, and then again grandchildren, and I shall ever reserve as one of the sweetest, rarest stories, the kind of story one tells to a little sick child, or whispers on Sunday evenings, what I felt when I first listened to Handel’s “Messiah.” David had said that I should care more for it the second time. This was possible, for my feelings now were hardly those of pleasure, even to-day depths were stirred within me, which must respond with a tension akin to pain. I had been in a light and holiday mood, my gay heart was all in the sunshine of a butterfly and unawakened existence; and the music, while it aroused me, brought with it a sense of shadow, of oppression which mingled with my joy. Heaven ceased to be a myth, an uncertain possibility, as I listened to the full burst of the choruses, or held my breath as one single voice floated through the air in quivering notes of sweetness. What had I thought, hitherto, of Jesus Christ? I had given to His history an intellectual belief. I had assented to the fact that He had borne my sins, and “The Lord had laid on Him the iniquity of us all;” but with the ponderous notes of the heavy music, came the crushing knowledge that my iniquities had added to His sorrows, and helped to make Him acquainted with grief. I was in no sense a religious girl; but when “Come unto Him, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will give you rest,” reached my ears, I felt vibrating through my heart strings, the certainty that some day I should need this rest. “Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him.”
“His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.” I looked at David, the book had fallen from his hands, his fine face was full of a kind of radiance, and the burden which had taken from him Amy, and the yoke which bade him resign his own will and deny himself, seemed to be borne with a sense of rejoicing which testified to the truth of how lightly even heavy sorrow can sit on a man, when with it God gives him rest.
The opening words, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,” would bring their own message at a not very distant day; but now they only spoke to me, something as a mother addresses a too happy, too wildly-exultant child, when she says in her tenderest tones, “Come and rest here in my arms for a little while, between your play.” Yes, I was only a child as yet, at play with life; but the music awoke in me the possible future, the possible working day, the possible time of rain, the possible storm, the possible need of a shelter from its blast. To heighten the effect of the music, came the effect of the cathedral itself. It is not a very beautiful English cathedral, but it was the first I had seen. Having never revelled in the glories of Westminster, I could appreciate the old grey walls of Hereford; and what man had done in the form of column and pillar, of transept and roof, the sun touched into fulness of life and colouring to-day. The grey walls had many coloured reflections from the painted windows, the grand old nave lay in a flood of light, and golden gleams penetrated into dusky corners, and brought into strong relief the symmetry and beauty of aisle and transept, triforium and clerestory. I mention all this – I try to touch it up with the colour with which it filled my own mind – because in the old cathedral of Hereford I left behind me the golden, unconsciously happy existence of childhood; because I, Gwladys, when I stepped outside into the Cathedral Close, and put my white-gloved hand inside David’s arm, and looked up expectantly into David’s face, was about to taste my first cup of life’s sorrow. I was never again to be an unconscious child, fretting over imaginary griefs, and exulting in imaginary delights.
“Gwladys,” said David, looking down at me, and speaking slowly, as though the words gave him pain, “Owen is coming home.”
Chapter Five
Why did you Hesitate?
Let no one suppose that in their delivery these words brought with them sorrow. I had been walking with my usual dancing motion, and it is true, that when David spoke, I stood still, faced round, and gazed at him earnestly, it is also true that the colour left my cheeks, and my eyes filled with tears, but my emotions were pleasurable, my tears were tears of joy.
Owen coming home!
Nobody quite knew how I loved Owen, how my heart had longed for him, how many castles in the air I had built, with him for their hero.
In all possible and impossible dreams of my own future, Owen had figured as the grand central thought. Owen would show me the world, Owen would let me live with him. He had promised me this when I was a little child, and he was a fine noble-looking youth, and I had believed him, I believed him still. I had longed and yearned for him, I had never forgotten him. My love for my good and sober brother David was very calm and sisterly, but my love for Owen was the romance of my existence. And now he was coming home, crowned with laurels, doubtless. For he had been away so long, he had left us so suddenly and mysteriously, that only could his absence be accounted for by supposing that my beautiful and noble brother had gone on some very great, and important, and dangerous mission, from which he would return now, crowned with honour and glory.
“Oh, David!” I exclaimed, when I could find my voice, “is it true? How very, very happy I am.”
“Yes, Gwladys,” replied David, “it is true; but let us walk up and down this path, it is quite quiet here, and I have a story to tell you about Owen.”
“How glad I am,” I repeated, “I love him more than any one, and I quite knew how it would be, I always guessed it, I knew he would come back covered with glory. Yes, David, go on, tell me quickly, what did my darling do?”
I was rather impatient, and I wondered why David did not reply more joyfully, why, indeed, at first he did not speak at all. I could see no reason for his silence, the crowds of men and women who had filled the cathedral had dispersed, had wandered to hotels for refreshment, or gone to explore, if strangers, the beauties and antiquities the old town possessed. There was no one to molest or disturb us, as we walked up and down in this quiet part of the Close.
“Well, David,” I said, “go on, tell me about my darling.”
“Yes,” said David, “I will tell you, but I have got something else to say first.”
“What?” I asked, impatiently.
“This; you have made a mistake about Owen, you imagine him to be what he is not.”
“What do I imagine him to be?” I asked, angrily, for David’s tone put into my heart the falsest idea it ever entertained – namely, that he was jealous of my greater love for Owen.
“What do I imagine?” I asked.
“You imagine that Owen is a hero. Now, Gwladys, you cannot love Owen too much, nor ever show your love to him too much, but you can do him no good whatever, if you start with a false idea of him.”
I was silent, too amazed at these words to reply at once.
“I tell you this, Gwladys,” continued David, “because I really believe it is in your power to help Owen. Nay, more, I want you to help him.”
Still I said nothing, the idea suggested by David’s words might be flattering, but it was too startling to be taken in its full significance at first. What did it mean? In all my dreams of Owen I had never contemplated his requiring help from me; but David had said that my ideas were false, my dreams mistaken. I woke up into full and excited listening, at his next words.
“And now I mean to tell you why you have not seen Owen for so long – why he has been away from us all these years.”
“Four years, now,” I said. “Yes, David, I have often wondered why you gave me no reason for his long, long absence. I said nothing, but I felt it a good bit – I did indeed.”
“It was a story you could hardly hear when you were a little child. Even now I only tell it to you because of Owen’s unlooked-for and unexpected return; because, as I say, I want you to help Owen; but even now I shall only tell you its outline.”
“David, you speak of Owen’s return as if you were not glad – as if it were not quite the happiest news in the world.”
“It is not that, my dear.”
“But why? Do you not love him?”
“Most truly I love him.”
“Well, what is the story? How mysterious you are!”
“Yes, I am glad,” continued David, speaking more to himself than to me. “I suppose I ought to be quite glad – to have no distrust. How faithless Amy would call me!”
When he mentioned Amy, I knew he had forgotten my presence – the name made me patient. I waited quietly for his next remark.
As I have said, he was a man of few words. His ideas moved slowly, and his language hardly came fluently.
“There are two kinds of love,” he began, still in his indirect way. “There is the love that thinks the object it loves perfection, and will see no fault in it.”
“Yes,” I interrupted, enthusiastically; “I know of that love – it is the only kind worth having.”
“I cannot agree with you, dear. That love may be deep and intense, but it is not great. There is a love which sees faults in the object of its love, but loves on through all. Such – ”
“Such love I should not care for,” I interrupted.
“Such love I could not live without, Gwladys. Such is the Divine love.”
“But God’s love is not like ours,” I said.
“No, dear; and I have only made the remark to justify myself – for, Gwladys, I have loved Owen through his faults.”
I started impatiently; but David had now launched on his tale, and would not be interrupted.
“Yes,” he continued, “I loved and love Owen through his faults. I know that mother thought him perfect, and so did you. I am not surprised at either of your feelings with regard to him – he was undoubtedly very brilliant, and on the surface, Gwladys, you might almost have said that so noble a form must have held a noble soul. I do not say this will never be so; but this was not so when you knew him last.”
I would have spoken again, but David laid his hand on my arm, to silence me.
“He had much of good in him; but he was not noble; he had one great weakness – pleasure was dearer to him than duty. Even when a little lad he would leave his tasks unlearned, to play for half an hour longer with you; this was a small thing, but it grew, Gwladys – it grew. And he had great temptations. It was much harder for him to do the right than for me; he was so brilliant – so – so, not clever – but so ready-witted. He was a great favourite in society, and society brought with it heaps of temptations. He struggled against the temptations, but he did not struggle hard enough; and his natural weakness, his great love for pleasure, grew on the food he gave it.
“We were in different colleges, and did not see each other every day. He made some friends whose characters – well, they were not men he ought to know. I spoke to him about this; poor fellow! it has lain on my heart often, that I may have spoken harshly, taking on myself elder brother airs, and made myself a sort of mentor. I could not do this intentionally, but it is possible I may have done it unintentionally. I felt hot on the subject, for the fellows I spoke against seemed to me low, in every sense beneath his notice. I did not know that even then, they had a hold on him which he could not, even if he would, shake off. He got angry, he – quarrelled with me. After this, I did not see him for some time. I blame myself again here, for I might have gone to him, but I did not. He had said some words which hurt me, and I stayed away.” David paused. “Yes,” he continued, taking up his narrative without any comment from me, “I remember, it was the middle of the term. I was sitting with some fellows after dinner; we were smoking in my rooms. I remember how the sun looked on the water, and how jolly I felt. We were talking of my coming of age, and I had asked all these fellows to help me to celebrate the event at Tynycymmer, when suddenly a man I knew came to the door, and called me out; he was a great friend of mine, he looked awfully white and grave; he put his arm inside mine, and we went down through Christ Church meadows to the edge of the river. There, as we stood together looking down into the river, and nodding, as if nothing were the matter, to some men of our college as they rowed past us; there, as we stood and listened to the splash of the oars, my friend told me about Owen. A long story, Gwladys. Shall I ever forget the spot where I stood and listened to it? As I said, I am not going to tell you the tale; it was one of disgrace – weakness – and sin. Evil companions had done most of it, but Owen had done some. It was a long story, dating back from the day of his first arrival; but now the climax had come – Owen had fallen – had sinned. I never knew until my friend spoke, how much I loved Owen. I blamed myself bitterly. I was his elder brother. I might have so treated him as to win his confidence, and to save him from this. He had fallen by means of the very temptations that must assail such a nature as his, and I, instead of holding out a helping hand, had stood aloof from him. In this moment of agony, when I learned all about his sin, I blamed myself as much as him. I started off at once to find him, I could not reproach him. I could only blame myself. When I did this, he burst into tears.”
Here David paused, and I tried to speak, but could not.
“Owen had sinned,” he continued, “and in such a way that the most public exposure seemed inevitable. To avoid this, to give him one chance for the future, I would do anything. There was one loophole of escape, and through that loophole, if any strength of mine could drag him, I was determined Owen should come. I could not leave Oxford, but I wrote to my mother. Her assistance was necessary, but I felt little doubt of her complying. I was not wrong. She helped me, as I knew she would. Nay, I think she was more eager than I. Between us we saved Owen.”
Here David paused, and taking out his handkerchief, he wiped some moisture from his brow.
His words were hardly either impassioned or eloquent; but no one knew, who did not hear them, with what pain they came slowly up from his heart.
Then I ventured to put the question which was hanging on the top of my lips —
“What was his sin?”
“The sin of weakness, Gwladys. The sad lacking of moral courage to say no, when no should be said. The putting pleasure before duty, that was the beginning of it. Then evil companions came round; temptation was yielded to, and, at last, the very men who had ruined and tempted him, managed to escape, and he was left to bear the brunt of everything. However, my dear, this is a story you need not know. I have told you the little I have, because, now that Owen is coming home, I want you to have a truer idea of his character, so that you may help him better. I need and want you to help him, Gwladys. I have said all this to you to-day for no other reason.”
I said nothing. David looked into my face, and I looked into his, then he went on.
“After that dreadful time at Oxford he went abroad, and I came home. Now he, too, is coming home.”
“To live with us at Tynycymmer?” I asked.
“No, no, my dear; he is coming home with a definite purpose; I have had a long letter from Owen, I must tell you some of it. He always wrote to me while he was away, but his letters, though tolerably cheerful, and fairly hopeful, were reserved, and seemed always to have something behind. I used to fear for him. Dear fellow, dear, dear fellow, my weak heart fears for him still, and yet with it all, I am proud and thankful. There is something great in Owen, otherwise this would never have so weighed on his mind.
“I must tell you that to save Owen, I had to spend money; that really was no sacrifice to me, a thing not worth mentioning, but it seems to have weighed much on him. In his letter, he told me that he has never ceased working hard at his profession, learning all he can about it. He says that he is now nearly qualified to work as a mechanical engineer; and in that particular department he has made mining engineering his special study. In his letter he also said that he had done this with a definite hope and object.
“There is a large coal mine on my property, a mine that has never been properly worked. Owen believes that out of this mine he can win back the gold I have spent on him; he has begged me to allow him to take the management of the mine; to live at Ffynon until this object is effected. I hesitated – I thought – at last I yielded.”
“Why did you hesitate? David.”
“Because, Gwladys, the object with which Owen works is worthless to me. I am glad he is coming to manage the mine, I have no doubt whatever as to his ability in the matter. I know in his profession he has much talent. Had he not written to me, I should have been obliged to ask a London engineer to take his place for a time. Yes, Gwladys, I like his work, but not his motive. The mine at Ffynon yields me little money, that is nothing; it also is dangerous, that is much; many accidents have taken place there, many lives have been lost. I want Owen to make the mine safe, as far as man can make it safe: I don’t care for the money. And this is the object I want you to help me in, Gwladys, not in words, but in a thousand ways in which a loving and true sister can. I want you to show to Owen that we none of us care for the money.”
“You lay upon me an impossible task,” I said; “you forget that I shall not be with Owen.”
“You said last night you were tired of Tynycymmer?”
“So I am, very often.”
“You are going to leave it, at least for a time; you and mother are to live with Owen at Ffynon.”
Chapter Six
Gwen’s Dream
If I felt excited when starting for Hereford on the morning of that day, how much more feverishly did my heart beat when I returned home in the evening!
I was in that state of mind when the need of a confidante was sore and pressing.
In whom should I confide? I loved my brother David, I dearly loved my mother, but in neither of them would I now repose confidence. No, they knew too much already. Into fresh ears, but still into ears that communicated with a very affectionate and faithful heart, would I pour my tale – or rather that portion of my tale of which I wished to speak. David had given me, in the old Cathedral Close, two very distinct pieces of information – two pieces of information, either of which would have proved quite sufficient to keep my eyes wakeful for many nights, and my heart restless for many days. Mother and I were going to leave Tynycymmer! Owen was coming home! Round this last item of intelligence floated murky and shadowy words. Owen had sinned! Owen was not the spotless hero I had imagined him! With regard to this piece of news I wished to take no one into my confidence; by the sheer strength of a very strong will I pushed it into the background of my thoughts; I managed to give it a subordinate place where the full sharpness of its sting would not for the present be felt. By-and-by I would drag it to the light; by-and-by I would analyse this thing and pull it to pieces; by-and-by I would face this enemy and dare it to do its worst; by-and-by, defeated, baffled, I would writhe under its blows; but, as I said, for the present it lay in abeyance, and other thoughts pressed upon me.
How much a change, even a little change, does signify to us girls! I once met a man who told me calmly, and with easy nonchalance, that he was about to visit Australia. I observed his eye never brightening at the prospect of the gay sea voyage, and the sights to be witnessed in the tropical richness of the far-off land; he had seen many changes, he had visited many lands, to him change was a thing of every day, and he told me, when I pressed him to speak, that he was weary of it all, and that there was nothing new under the sun. But to me! What did not a change, even from one end of Glamorgan to another, mean to me? How very long it would take before I could be satiated with fresh places, or my eyes grow weary of new sights. So much did this one very small change mean to me, that I almost fancied, as we were whirled back in the train, that my fellow-passengers must know something of the uprooting about to take place, and some disquieting waves from the agitation which was surging round me, must be pulsing in their own hearts.
I, who had lived all my sixteen years at Tynycymmer, was going to make another place my home! It was on this item of David’s news that I longed so for a confidante.
When I got home, my eyes were bright and my cheeks flushed. Mother looked anxiously from David to me.
“She knows, mother,” said David, going over and kissing the stately and beautiful face, and looking down tenderly into the dark depths of the eyes, which were raised inquiringly to his.