WANDERINGS—_continued._
JOHN ASPINALL had come up by the night train to London—a place which
he had never visited before—on account of a telegram received from
Mr. White on the preceding day at Greenside Farm. Never before had a
telegram been seen, or scarcely heard of, in that quiet secluded spot,
and its contents had filled the hitherto peaceful home with mourning
and woe. Had the tidings been those of David's death, they would not
have caused more anguish. His sisters cried bitterly, little Nelly the
loudest of all, though she could not, of course, understand the cause
of the trouble; she only knew that something dreadful had happened to
Davy.
Jenny was indignant at the thought of her brother—her darling
brother—being brought before a magistrate.
"He is as innocent as a lamb, I'm certain that he is," she exclaimed
through her sobs. "This is the doing of some wicked, cruel enemy, who
wants to ruin our Davy. Are you not sure that he is innocent, Minnie?"
Poor Minnie could only hope so. Her love was as tender as Jenny's, but
not so blind. She was too well-aware that poor Davy had not made duty
the rule of his conduct at home, and she knew that when a stone is set
rolling down a steep hill, no one can tell where it will stop. The
tone of the very few short notes which David had written home during
the last six months had made his sister very uneasy; of late he had
written none at all. Minnie was less surprised than distressed when
the sad news came. She tried, though with a very sore heart, to cheer
her mother, and speak hope to her father, but her great resource was
pouring out her heart in prayer to God.
Mrs. Aspinall could not weep, and would not complain, but she trembled,
and a feeling of faint sickness came over her frame. Her boy, her
darling, her pride, he to whom she had once looked as her future
comfort and the support of the family, was he to bring down the grey
hairs of his parents with sorrow to the grave?
"Wife," said the farmer abruptly, "I must be up to London; there's a
train starts at ten to-night."
Mrs. Aspinall cast a sad look out at the chill wintry landscape, but
she knew it would be vain to attempt to prevent her husband from taking
the journey. She pulled out of her large pocket a purse, for she
usually had charge of the money of the family. She emptied the purse on
the deal table with her cold trembling fingers; there were a few small
pieces of silver, and several of copper, but "not" one of gold.
The farmer looked at the little store for a moment or two with a
knitted brow, then muttered as if to himself, "Cobbs said last week as
how he'd be glad to buy Crummie; I'll just step over and see if he's in
the same mind."
"We'd spare anything for our boy," said Mary Aspinall. These were the
first words which she had trusted herself to utter since the arrival of
that dreadful telegram paper.
So Crummie was sold, the favourite cow that the farmer had reared from
a calf; that had been the pride and pet of his children, and whose
milk had been the chief means, as his wife often said, of bringing
him through his long illness. With a full purse but a fuller heart,
the unhappy father started on his journey to London, on a dark, cold,
drizzly night. He would not have started alone, for Mary yearned to go
with him, had the mother not feared that all the spare cash would be
wanted for David, and had she not felt that it was needful for her to
stop and take care of the girls and the farm.
After once catching a glimpse of his father in the police-court,
David could hardly give his mind to attend to what was passing around
him. The voices sounded like a confused babble in his ears; he seemed
conscious only of one thing, that he was a guilty wretch, deserving
any amount of punishment that might be inflicted upon him. How had he
repaid all the love that had been lavished on him since his birth; how
had he fulfilled the fond hopes of which he had long been the object?
David Aspinall was convicted of misdemeanour; the sentence was fine or
imprisonment. John paid the fine at once; his son, who was well-aware
how scanty were the means of his parents, could not bear to think,
though he could easily guess, how the money had been procured. His
uncle White, who was present, led the unhappy father, and yet more
unhappy son, out of the court, called a cab, and took them at once to
his home. Not a word was uttered during the long rattling drive. The
farmer sat opposite to David, leaning both hands on his crutch, with
his head bowed down; a heavier weight than that of years was crushing
the honest man to the dust!
And then could David realise to some extent the misery described in the
words of the Psalmist, the anguish of remorse "without" confession,
remorse uncheered by the hope of God's forgiveness. The Lord's hand was
heavy upon him; his moisture was indeed "changed into the drought of
summer!"
David made a not uncommon mistake at this time of shame and anguish. He
thought that "remorse" was "repentance;" he hated himself for his sin;
but he had yet to learn that to "hate self" is not always to "give up
self," and that the heart may be wrung with misery, yet the stubborn
will remain unbroken.
"You'll come back with me, lad? Your mother won't be easy till she sees
you; you're wanted more than over at the farm."
These were the first words which John Aspinall addressed on that day to
his son, and they were uttered in a hoarse, husky voice.
"I'll never go back!" exclaimed David, with passionate excitement.
"This will be known all over the village—I could not look any one in
the face! No, no; I'd sooner die than go back!"
"But what if it be your duty to go," said Mr. White, in a tone of grave
reproof. "We must sometimes put our likes and dislikes out of the
question, and try—to make up for the past."
"I'll go out to one of the colonies, and work my way in a place where I
am not known," exclaimed David, who had hardly listened to his uncle,
and who dared not look at his father.
Yet again the two ways, the right and the wrong, were before the young
lad. Had "his" been true godly repentance, he would "at any cost" have
tried to make the only amends that he could make to his family for
all the grief that he had caused them. He would have sacrificed his
self-will to what he knew to be the clear duty before him. He would
have obeyed the wishes of his earthly father, and so have followed the
guidance of his heavenly Father. But David was not prepared to do this.
Once again, after all the bitter lessons of the past, he chose the
way of his own inclination, and decided on working his way out to the
African coast.
David did not even go back with his afflicted father to spend Christmas
at Greenside Farm. He would not have done so, even could he have
afforded the expense of the journey. As it was, all his wages had gone
in selfish pleasures, and he had to borrow from his uncle what was
required for bare necessaries to fit him out for the voyage.
Before a fortnight had passed, David was tossing in the British
Channel, encountering the hardships of life at sea, and in vain
straining his eyes, as he passed the Dorsetshire coast, to catch a
glimpse of the distant church spire rising from the clump of old elms.
"The way of transgressors is hard."
This is declared in the Bible, and millions, by sad experience, can
testify to its truth. Every one who habitually chooses to follow his
own will, disregarding duty and conscience, will find in the end—if he
find not at once—that sorrow follows as the shadow of sin.
David was no longer a thoughtless, light-hearted lad, he was a burdened
sinner, ashamed to think of his home, afraid to think of his God! After
a "miserable" voyage, which had seemed to him as if it never would end,
David arrived at the Cape of Good Hope. He was almost unprovided with
money, and did not find it as easy as he had expected to obtain good
employment. He got a few odd jobs, but no permanent engagement.
After a while he was tempted by the offer of high wages, and also by
the hope of adventure and sport, to go a considerable way inland, to
enter the service of Hans Kuhe, the Dutch Boer, to whom I have already
introduced the reader. The lad spent all his little means in making the
long journey, and then found himself at Heinbok Kloof in the position
almost of a prisoner, or rather of a slave, to the coarse-minded
hard-hearted man whom he had chosen as master. David had no power to
get away, for it was impossible for him, without money or oxen, to
return to Cape Town through a dry barren tract, the haunt of wild
beasts, and of tribes of men almost as wild.
Young Aspinall was chained to the service of one who so disliked
England and the English that he gave the name of "Britain" to his most
obstinate ox, for the express purpose of having something to thrash
which bore that hated name. Oh how bitterly did David contrast the
rude dwelling of Hans, seen under the furnace-like glare of an African
sun, to his own peaceful home in the valley; the yellow thick-lipped
Hottentots, who, whenever they dared, left their work to be done by the
English lad, to the dear ones whose faces and forms were so familiar to
memory; his father, with his broad sun-burnt brow; his gentle mother,
his rosy-checked sisters. David even contrasted the lean long-legged
oxen with sides seamed by the traces of the cruel rhinoceros hide, to
the sleek cattle that grazed in English pastures, or stood, as he so
often had seen them, in the pool enjoying the fresh cool waters in the
stillness of a summer eve. Sorely did David repent that he had ever
wandered from Greenside Farm.
But still David's was not that repentance which leads the sinner to
God, it was not laying down the burden of his sins and his sorrows
at the feet of his Saviour, and trusting to that Saviour's mercy and
merits for pardon and peace. It was not until the night on which
my story opens, when David was returning from an expedition still
further inland, undertaken by his master for purposes of barter with
the natives, that the poor Wanderer had had a glimpse of the blessed
truth that he might yet return to his heavenly Father, that his
transgressions might be forgiven and all his sins blotted out.
Great as were his sufferings and dangers, that was a night of blessing
to the penitent lad. It was then that he found his God and looked up to
Him in faith, not as the stern Judge who would execute judgment upon
a criminal, not as the awful King who would crush the rebel who had
broken His laws, but as the compassionate Saviour, deeply wronged, yet
loving still, stretching forth those sacred hands once pierced for the
sake of sinners, and calling to His wandering sheep, "Turn ye, turn ye,
why will ye die?"
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