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Chapter XL.

“My father! and you?” said Hope.

Then Jack Stanley narrated simply the facts of the case, making so little of his own actions, dwelling so tenderly upon the weakness and the contrition and the pitiable condition of Maitland, and urging so strenuously the necessity of going at once to his relief, lest he should want help and die, that Bernard stared at him in silent wonder.

“Jack,” said he, “what has wrought this change in you? What spirit has come over you?”

“A better spirit than that which once actuated me, Hope, I trust. I cannot easily speak of these things yet, so let it alone for the present. Will you go back with me to your father? He must be brought here.”

“Did you tell him that I am here?” asked Hope.

“I told him nothing of you: he does not know who I am, or that I know you. I will go and speak to Mr. page 360 Grant.” And Jack hurried from the kitchen, followed by Maitland.

Mr. Grant proposed that they should go up the river in his canoe, for Stanley was in no condition for further travelling on foot. It was not very long before the canoe was out and manned, and, with affectionate farewells from the occupants to Mr. and Mrs. Grant, on her way up the river to the rhythm of the rowers' song, which had the effect of lulling tired Jack into a sound slumber.

During the day they met the party of Maoris who had been dispatched in search of Stanley, who seemed much amused at having missed their quarry, and at seeing him on his way back to the very spot he had so lately left. They gave the welcome news that the Pakea in the hut was getting on well and in want of nothing, and then pursued their way to the settlement.

“Jack,” said Hope Maitland, “what had we better do when we get there?”

“You go up to the hut, and I will remain here.”

“But if he receives me as he did you at first?” said Hope; “if I cannot get him even to listen? He knows you and likes you, and will be glad to see you.”

So it was settled that Jack should go first to the hermit's hut, and break to him the news of his son's coming.

Jack knew the spot exactly where they were to disembark, and he stopped the canoe and leapt ashore. If he deliberated about it he should not know what to say, so he trusted to his mother-wit to help him.

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A few minutes afterwards he entered the opening where the hut stood, and saw Maitland standing against the entrance leaning on his crutch. His whole face lighted up at sight of Jack, and he made a movement forward.

“I was just thinking of you and wondering if I should ever see you again. I have missed you so very much. I never thought that I could miss any one again: you seem to have made me human again, somehow. I am very glad to see you again, my boy.”

“And I have brought you good news also!” said Jack, bursting at once into the subject, and forgetting how little of Maitland's history he had heard from himself. “There is some one with me who is most anxious to see you, who has been searching the country for you—some one whom you will be very pleased to see.”

“Who?” asked Maitland: “there is no one that I know of that I should be glad to see.”

“Not your son Hope?” asked Jack.

“Is it Hope? is it my son? No: I shall not be glad to see him—I do not wish to see him. He has no reason to be proud of his father.” But for all that, the man shook and turned pale at the thought. Then he turned to Jack and asked,

“How did you know about my son?”

“You told me yourself; and he is my greatest friend. I had parted with him but a few days before I met you. He came to New Zealand to see you.”

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“Then he is a better son than I deserve; but why does he come here to find a wretched man who has separated himself by his own sins from all intercourse with his kind? Tell him to return to the society of honest men.”

“I shall not tell him that,” said Jack. “I shall only tell him to come to you.” As he spoke, he beckoned to Bernard, who was within a few yards, and the next moment Hope was standing before his father; and Jack Stanley had wandered away.

Mr. Maitland was so changed by his illness and the solitude following upon it, during which he had had time to think over many things which Jack Stanley's words had suggested, that he was very unlike the misanthropic man that he had been when Jack first found him, and he behaved very much like an ordinary father upon meeting a son after a lapse of years. He caught him in his arms and embraced him.

Then, after a long pause, during which neither spoke, he said,

“What made you come after me, Hope?”

“Because I wanted you, partly; and—never mind the other reason. Did you ever get the letter I wrote to you to Wellington?”

“It was that letter first made me quit Wellington. It brought my past life so vividly before me. Hope, this is a strange confession to make to my own child. I had, by occupation and the excitement of business, striven for page 363 years to drive away recollection; but the time came when I could not. I knew you to be upright and honourable, and I could not face you after the discovery which had been made to you by Stanley's son; so I left Wellington and tried to recover myself at Auckland; but it was useless: I carried the evil within me; and I sought this solitude in the hope of finding peace. Peace! instead of peace, with nothing to distract it, my mind became a torture to me. I have tried the life of an ascetic. I have mortified myself in every way, and I was becoming fast a hater of other men as well as of myself, when I met with that boy who brought you to me.”

“That boy!” said Bernard, “you mean Jack Stanley.”

“What!” exclaimed his father, “who? What are you speaking of?”

“My friend, Jack Stanley, who looked after you when you broke your leg.”

“Jack Stanley!” ejaculated Maitland again.

“The son of the man whom once you knew,” said Bernard, looking down and blushing at having to cause his father to blush; “the son of John Stanley.”

“Does he know?” asked Maitland, in a low voice.

“He knew very shortly after your accident. He is a noble fellow.”

Maitland said nothing, but he bent his head forward and covered it with his hands.

Jack felt very shy of going back into Mr. Maitland's presence, and required a great deal of persuasion from page 364 Hope to induce him to do so, and he felt worse still when Mr. Maitland said frankly, upon seeing him,

“John Stanley, can you find it in your heart to forgive a man who wronged your father very deeply, but who is sorry for the wrong?”

And Jack's warm heart could not stand up against the appeal; he burst into tears, and seizing Mr. Maitland's hand, he said,

“I ought to ask your pardon for all the wicked revengeful feelings I had towards you, until God took them from me.”

Maitland bent forward and kissed Jack's forehead, but he said no more.

The next day he made no resistance to the wishes of his son and Stanley, and returned with them to Mr. Grant's house.

Before many days, he told the missionary all his story; I need hardly, I think, say that Mr. Grant endeavoured to convince him of a better atonement than that he had tried to work out uselessly for himself, in stronger words than Jack had been able to use.

Mr. Grant's kindness and gentleness won upon Mr. Maitland so that he expressed a wish to remain permanently at the settlement.

“No,” said the missionary. “It seems to me that it is your duty to return to the position which you have left. You are a man of wealth and influence: you must use both influence and wealth to the glory of God and the page 365 good of men. You have no right to avoid your work. For your son's sake, as well as your own, you must return to Wellington. Remember,” added Mr. Grant, gently, “that no one but we few know you in any character but that of an honourable man. You must maintain that character.”

Maitland sighed. It is so much easier to retire from the world and avoid duty, than to do it being in the world.

“And,” said he, after a time, “I have two sons now.”

He remembered that fact always. Thenceforth Jack Stanley was to him as much his son as Hope; and when, some years afterwards, his health, which had been a good deal undermined by remorse and neglect, gave way and he died, his large property was divided equally between the two.

Jack Stanley was astonished at receiving, some short time after his return to Wellington, a letter from Mr. Denby, the lawyer, telling him that his father's former property, The Beeches, was once more his own, though he did not tell him by whose means it became so; but there was no need to inform Jack Stanley of such particulars, he could easily guess to whom he was indebted for the restoration.

Hope Bernard continued practising his noble profession in Wellington, and Jack made his art his calling until the death of Mr. Maitland, when they both returned to England, and Jack had the pleasure of receiving at his page 366 and his father's house his kind friend and fellow-traveller, Colonel Bradshaw, and his wife and family.

Of one thing you may rest assured, that whether in New Zealand or at home, Jack Stanley and Hope Bernard will always continue, as they have hitherto been, firm friends and brothers.

The End.