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Chapter XXXV.

Jack Stanley wanted to be alone. There were thoughts in his heart that he felt he must think out.

As he passed through the pah, the natives smiled and nodded to him, wishing him a good morning, for he had made friends with almost all of them, having the genius of popularity—a most valuable and responsible quality, like all other talents. Several stopped him to make some little remark, to which Jack good-naturedly listened and answered. Some asked him to stop and take their likenesses, for they one and all took great interest in his drawings. There were two or three children amusing themselves in a swing amongst the trees, and they called merrily to Jack to come and play with them. It seemed like leaving home to leave this Maori village, where every one had been so kind to him; and as the signal for morning prayers rang out on the air, Jack Stanley stood looking back at the little band of people as they left their various occupations, and hurried to the chapel.

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“You come too, Pakea Jack; come and say prayers,” said a grey-haired Maori.

Jack blushed as he made some trifling excuse to the old man, and moved away. He could not laugh the subject off as he used to do. Why should he be moving away from the House of God when every one else was going towards it? Had he neither part nor lot in the matter? He walked in the fresh morning air through the luxuriant forest without noticing it for the first time. He did not hear what he had himself called the “music of the trees,” nor the call of the mocking-bird, nor the notes of the pigeons, for his eyes were on the ground. He walked so for more than half an hour, and then he turned in the direction of the river, and emerged from amongst the thick trees, and found himself upon a soft bank of grass, which went down to the water's edge.

What had become of his intentions with regard to his drawing, that he should set his back against a tree and gaze at the river without removing his knapsack from his shoulders?

He wanted to be alone, that he might think—think quietly over the last twelve months of his life. Now he went back to the old times of his life in London with his father; of his father's death, and his first knowledge of Hope Bernard. He thought of that resolution of his which had come upon him—as he at the time strove to persuade himself as a righteous inspiration—to pursue Maitland until he avenged upon him his father's injuries; and page 323 the feeling which then had seemed commendable, struck him in a different light. Bernard had throughout told him that he was wrong with a hesitating manner, easily enough explained now, which had perhaps taken away from the force of his opinion. Had Bernard been in the right? Apart from the fact of the man who had injured Stanley being his father, was Bernard right? Why had Jack Stanley shrunk from everything that could remind him of God and of heavenly things? Why did he shun opening the Bible? Why was he afraid of going upon his knees? Yes, afraid. Was it because all along he had known in his innermost heart that he was doing that which was displeasing to God? Whatever Jack Stanley's faults were, he was thoroughly straightforward and without guile. He did not try to deceive himself and to make excuses to his own heart. He saw that he had been all wrong. In the matter of Mr. Maitland only? No: in everything; from his childhood upwards. He had lived without God, and God had now brought him to a reckoning.

What if that river, that silvery, shimmering water which was dancing in the sun before his eyes, had closed over his head for ever upon that day when Bernard had, like a noble Christian man as he was, saved him from drowning—him who was bent upon his father's destruction?

“I should have gone to hell, and I should have deserved it,” mused he. “What am I that I should take page 324 justice into my own hands? I wonder that God has had patience to bear with me all this time.”

He might well wonder, as we all may; but that God is not a man.

Happily for Jack Stanley, he had been taught the truths of the Gospel when a child, and these things, although put away until now, or only remembered as mere words, came back to him by God's grace, and entered his heart.

No one but God saw his tears of repentance, or heard his prayer for forgiveness for his wasted youth and his neglect of his merciful Saviour. Some may think that Jack Stanley had not much to repent of, seeing that he had not been able to carry out the one great wrong which he had determined; but when God opens our eyes to see ourselves as we are, we learn that a life without love to Him is in itself a sin of the greatest magnitude, and Jack Stanley's life had been one long ingratitude of want of love.

He did not make any sketches on that day, but it was the great day of his life.