The morning after the accident, Miss
Huntingdon, who was now keeping her brother’s
house, and had been returning with him the night before
after a visit to a friend, appeared as usual at the
breakfast-table, rather to Mr Huntingdon’s surprise.
“My dear Kate,” he said,
“I hardly expected to see you at breakfast,
after your fright, and shaking, and bruising.
Most ladies would have spent the morning in bed;
but I am delighted to see you, and take it for granted
that you are not seriously the worse for the mishap.”
“Thank you, dear Walter,”
was her reply; “I cannot say that I feel very
brilliant this morning, but I thought it would be kinder
in me to show myself, and so relieve you from all
anxiety, as I have been mercifully preserved from
anything worse than a severe shaking, the effects of
which will wear off in a day or two, I have no doubt.”
“Well, Kate, I must say it’s
just like yourself, never thinking of your own feelings
when you can save other people’s. Why,
you are almost as brave as our hero Walter, who risked
his own neck to get us out of our trouble last night. Ah!
here he comes, and Amos after him. Well, that’s
perhaps as it should be honour to whom honour
is due.”
A cloud rested on Miss Huntingdon’s
face as she heard these last words, and it was deepened
as she observed a smile of evident exultation on the
countenance of her younger nephew, as he glanced at
the flushed face of his elder brother. But now
all seated themselves at the table, and the previous
evening’s disaster was the all-absorbing topic
of conversation.
“Well,” said the squire,
“things might have been worse, no doubt, though
it may be some time before the horses will get over
their fright, and the carriage must go to the coachmaker’s
at once. By-the-by, Harry,” speaking
to the butler, who was waiting at table, “just
tell James, when you have cleared away breakfast,
to see to that fence at once. It must be made
a good substantial job of, or we shall have broken
bones, and broken necks too, perhaps, one of these
days.”
“I hope, Walter,” said
his sister, “the horses were not seriously injured.”
“No, I think not,” was
his reply; “nothing very much to speak of.
Charlie has cut one of his hind legs rather badly, that
must have been when he flung out and broke away; but
Beauty hasn’t got a scratch, I’m pleased
to say, and seems all right.”
“And yourself, Walter?”
“Oh, I’m all safe and
sound, except a few bruises and a bit of a sprained
wrist. And now, my boy, Walter, I must thank
you once more for your courage and spirit. But
for you, your aunt and myself might have been lying
at the bottom of the chalk-pit, instead of sitting
here at the breakfast-table.”
Walter laughed his thanks for the
praise, declaring that he exceedingly enjoyed getting
his father and aunt on to dry land, only he was sorry
for the carriage and horses. But here the butler who
was an old and privileged servant in the family, and
therefore considered himself at liberty to offer occasionally
a remark when anything was discussed at table in which
he was personally interested interrupted.
“If you please, sir, I think
Master Amos hasn’t had his share of the praise.
’Twas him as wouldn’t let us cut the traces,
and then stood by Beauty and kept her still.
I don’t know where you’d have been, sir,
nor Miss Huntingdon neither, if it hadn’t been
for Master Amos’s presence of mind.”
“Ah, well, perhaps so,”
said his master, not best pleased with the remark;
while Amos turned red, and motioned to the butler to
keep silent. “Presence of mind is a very
useful thing in its way, no doubt; but give me good
manly courage, there’s nothing like
that, to my mind. What do you say,
Kate?”
“Well, Walter,” replied
his sister slowly and gravely, “I am afraid I
can hardly quite agree with you there. Not that
I wish to take away any of the credit which is undoubtedly
due to Walter. I am sure we are all deeply indebted
to him; and yet I cannot but feel that we are equally
indebted to Amos’s presence of mind.”
“Oh, give him his due, by all
means,” said the squire, a little nettled at
his sister’s remark; “but, after all, good
old English courage for me. But, of course,
as a woman, you naturally don’t value courage
as we men do.”
“Do you think not, Walter?
Perhaps some of us do not admire courage quite in
the same way, or the same sort of courage most; but
I think there can be no one of right feeling, either
man or woman, who does not admire real courage.”
“I don’t know what you
mean, Kate, about `the same sort of courage.’
Courage is courage, I suppose, pretty much the same
in everybody who has it.”
“I was thinking of moral courage,”
replied the other quietly; “and that often goes
with presence of mind.”
“Moral courage! moral courage!
I don’t understand you,” said her brother
impatiently. “What do you mean by moral
courage?”
“Well, dear brother, I don’t
want to vex you; I was only replying to your question.
I admire natural courage, however it is shown, but
I admire moral courage most.”
“Well, but you have not told
me what you mean by moral courage.”
“I will try and explain myself
then. Moral courage, as I understand it, is
shown when a person has the bravery and strength of
character to act from principle, when doing so may
subject him, and he knows it, to misunderstanding,
misrepresentation, opposition, ridicule, or persecution.”
The squire was silent for a moment,
and fidgeted on his chair. Amos coloured and
cast down his eyes; while his brother looked up at
his aunt with an expression on his face of mingled
annoyance and defiance. Then Mr Huntingdon asked,
“Well, but what’s to hinder a person having
both what I should call old-fashioned courage and
your moral courage at the same time?”
“Nothing to hinder it, necessarily,”
replied Miss Huntingdon. “Very commonly,
however, they do not go together; or perhaps I ought
rather to say, that while persons who have moral courage
often have natural courage too, a great many persons
who have natural courage have no moral courage.”
“You mean, aunt, I suppose,”
said her nephew Walter, rather sarcastically, “that
the one’s all `dash’ and the other all
`duty.’”
“Something of the kind, Walter,”
replied his aunt. “The one acts upon a
sudden impulse, or on the spur of the moment, or from
natural spirit; the other acts steadily, and from
deliberate conviction.”
“Can you give us an example,
aunt?” asked the boy, but now with more of respect
and less of irritation in his manner.
“Yes, I can,” she replied;
“and I will do so if you like, and my example
shall be that of one who combined both natural and
moral courage. My moral hero is Christopher
Columbus.”
“A regular brick of a man, I
allow; but, dear aunt, pray go on.”
“Well, then, I have always had
a special admiration for Columbus because of his noble
and unwavering moral courage. Just think of what
he had to contend with. It was enough to daunt
the stoutest heart and wear out the most enduring
patience. Convinced that somewhere across the
ocean to the west there must be a new and undiscovered
world, and that it would be the most glorious of enterprises
to find that new world and plant the standard of the
Cross among its people, he never wavered in his one
all-absorbing purpose of voyaging to those unknown
shores and winning them for Christ. And yet,
from the very first, he met with every possible discouragement,
and had obstacle upon obstacle piled up in his path.
He was laughed to scorn as a half-mad enthusiast;
denounced as a blasphemer and gainsayer of Scripture
truth; cried down as an ignoramus, unworthy of the
slightest attention from men of science; tantalised
by half promises; wearied by vexatious delays:
and yet never did his courage fail nor his purpose
waver. At last, after years of hope deferred
and anxieties which made him grey while still in the
prime of life, he was permitted to set sail on what
was generally believed to be a desperate crusade,
with no probable issue but death. And just picture
him to yourself, Walter, as he set out on that voyage
amidst the sullen murmurs and tears of the people.
His ships were three `caravels,’ as they were
called, that is, something the same as our
coasting colliers, or barges, and there
was no deck in two of them. Besides, they were
crazy, leaky, and scarcely seaworthy; and the crews
numbered only one hundred and twenty men, most of them
pressed, and all hating the service. Nevertheless,
he ventured with these into an ocean without any known
shore; and on he went with one fixed, unalterable
purpose, and that was to sail westward, westward, westward
till he came to land. Days and weeks went by,
but no land was seen. Provisions ran short,
and every day’s course made return home more
hopeless. But still his mind never changed;
still he plunged on across that trackless waste of
waters. The men mutinied and one can
hardly blame them; but he subdued them by his force
of character, they saw in his eye that which
told them that their leader was no common man, but
one who would die rather than abandon his marvellous
enterprise. And you remember the end?
The very day after the mutiny, a branch of thorn with
berries on it floats by them. They are all excitement.
Then a small board appears; then a rudely-carved
stick; then at night Columbus sees a light, and next
day lands on the shores of his new world, after a voyage
of more than two months over seas hitherto unexplored
by man, and in vessels which nothing but a special
providence could have kept from foundering in the
mighty waters. The man who could carry out such
a purpose in the teeth of such overwhelming opposition,
discouragement, and difficulty, may well claim our
admiration for courage of the highest and noblest
order.”
No one spoke for a moment, and then
Mr Huntingdon said, “Well, Kate, Columbus was
a brave man, no doubt, and deserves the best you can
say of him; and I think I see what you mean, from
his case, about the greatness and superiority of moral
courage.”
“I am glad, Walter, that I have
satisfied you on that point,” was her reply.
“You see there was no sudden excitement to call
out or sustain his courage. It was the bravery
of principle, not of mere impulse. It was so
grand because it stood the strain, a daily-increasing
strain, of troubles, trials, and hindrances, which
kept multiplying in front of him every day and hour
as he pressed forward; and it never for a moment gave
way under that strain.”
“It was grand indeed, aunt,”
said Walter. “I am afraid my courage would
have oozed out of every part of me before I had been
a week on board one of those caravels. So all
honour to Christopher Columbus and moral courage.”
That same morning, when Miss Huntingdon
was at work in her own private sitting-room, there
came a knock at the door, followed by the head of
Walter peeping round it.
“May I come in, auntie? I’ve a favour
to ask of you.”
“Come in, dear boy.”
“Well, Aunt Kate, I’ve
been thinking over what you said at breakfast about
moral courage, and I begin to see that I am uncommonly
short of it, and that Amos has got my share of it
as well as his own.”
“But that need not be, Walter,”
said his aunt; “at least it need not continue
to be so.”
“I don’t know, auntie;
perhaps not. But, at any rate, what father calls
old-fashioned courage is more in my line; and yet I
don’t want to be quite without moral courage
as well, so will you promise me just two
things?”
“What are they, Walter?”
“Why, the first is to give me
a bit of a hint whenever you see me what
I suppose I ought to call acting like a moral coward.”
“Well, dear boy, I can do that.
But how am I to give the hint if others are by? for
you would not like me to speak out before your father
or the servants.”
“I’ll tell you, auntie,
what you shall do that is to say, of course,
if you don’t mind. Whenever you see me
showing moral cowardice, or want of moral courage,
and I suppose that comes much to the same thing, and
you would like to give me a hint without speaking,
would you put one of your hands quietly on the table,
and then the other across it just so and
leave them crossed till I notice them?”
“Yes, Walter, I can do that,
and I will do it; though I daresay you will
sometimes think me hard and severe.”
“Never mind that, auntie; it will do me good.”
“Well, dear boy, and what is the other thing
I am to promise?”
“Why, this, I want
you, the first opportunity after the hint, when you
and I are alone together, to tell me some story it
must be a true one, mind of some good man
or woman, or boy or girl, who has shown moral courage
just where I didn’t show it. `Example is better
than precept,’ they say, and I am sure it is
a great help to me; for I shan’t forget Christopher
Columbus and his steady moral courage in a hurry.”
“I am very glad to hear what
you say, Walter,” replied his aunt; “and
it will give me great pleasure to do what you wish.
My dear, dear nephew, I do earnestly desire to see
you grow up into a truly noble man, and I want to
be, as far as God permits me, in the place of a mother
to you.”
As Miss Huntingdon uttered these words
with deep emotion, Walter flung his arms passionately
round her, and, sinking on his knees, buried his face
in her lap, while tears and sobs, such as he was little
accustomed to give vent to, burst from him.
“O auntie!” he said vehemently,
when he had a little recovered himself, “I know
I am not what I ought to be, with all my dash and courage,
which pleases father so much. I’m quite
sure that there’s a deal of humbug in me after
all. It’s very nice to please him, and
to hear him praise me and call me brave; but I should
like to please you too. It would be worth more,
in one way, to have your praise, though father
is very kind.”
“Well, my dear boy, I hope you
will be able to please me too, and, better still,
to please God.” She spoke gently and almost
sadly as she said these words, kissing at the same
time Walter’s fair brow.
“I’m afraid, auntie,”
was the boy’s reply, “I don’t think
much about that. But Amos does, I know; and
though I laugh at him sometimes, yet I respect him
for all that, and I believe he will turn out the true
hero after all.”