Miss Huntingdon was not the only person
in the family at Flixworth Manor who entertained a
deep affection for Amos Huntingdon, and highly valued
him. Harry the butler loved him as if he had
been his own son. The old man had been inherited
with the estate by its present owner, who remembered
him almost as long as he could remember anything, and
had a sincere regard for him, knowing him to be one
of those old-fashioned domestics who look upon their
employer’s interests as their own. Harry’s
hair was now snowy-white, but he retained much of his
vigour unimpaired, the winter of his old age being
“frosty, but kindly.” So he had
never gone by any other name than “Harry,”
nor wished to do so, with his master and his master’s
friends. However, in the kitchen he expected
to be called “Mr. Frazer,”
and would answer to no other name when addressed by
boys and strangers of his own rank. When the
first child was born Harry took to her with all his
might. He knew that his master was disappointed
because she was not a boy, but that made no difference
to Harry. Nothing pleased him better than to
act now and then as nurse to Miss Julia when she was
still in long clothes; and many a peal of hearty and
innocent mirth resounded from the kitchen premises
as the servants gazed, with tears of amusement running
down their faces, at Mr. Frazer, by the
nurse’s permission, pacing up and down a sunny
walk in the kitchen garden, with steps slow and grotesquely
dignified, holding the infant warily and tenderly,
affirming, when he gave her back to the nurse, in
a self-congratulatory tone, that “little miss”
would be quiet with him when she would be so with
no one else; which certainly might be cause for some
wonder, seeing that he would usually accompany his
nursings with such extraordinarily guttural attempts
at singing as were far better calculated to scare
any ordinary baby into temporary convulsions than
to soothe it to rest when its slumbers had once been
broken. And how the old man did rejoice when
the little thing could toddle into his pantry!
And no wonder that she was very ready to do so, for
Harry had an inexhaustible store of plums, and bonbons,
and such like enticements, which were always forthcoming
when little miss gladdened his heart with a visit.
So they were fast friends, and thoroughly understood
each other.
When, however, a son and heir was
born, and there was in consequence a perfect delirium
of bell-ringing in the village church-tower, Harry
by no means entered heart and soul into the rejoicings.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “there’s
no help for it, I suppose. It’s all right,
no doubt; but Miss Julia’s my pet, and so she
shall be as long as my name’s Harry.”
The new infant, therefore, received none of the attention
at his hands which its predecessor had enjoyed.
When pressed by the housekeeper, with an arch smile
on her good-natured face, to take “baby”
out for an airing, he shook his head very gravely and
declined the employment, affirming that his nursing
days were over. The name also of the new baby
was a sore subject to Harry. “`Amos,’
indeed! Well, what next? Who ever heard
of an `Amos’ in the family? You might go
as far back as Noah and you’d never find one.
Mr Sutterby might be a very good gentleman, but his
Christian name was none the better for that.”
And, for a while, the old man’s heart got more
and more firmly closed against the young heir; while
Amos, on his part, in his boyish days, made no advances
towards being on friendly terms with the old servant,
who yet could not help being sometimes sorry for his
young master, when he marked how the sunshine of love
and favour, which was poured out abundantly on Miss
Julia, came but in cold and scattered rays to her
desolate-hearted brother.
This kindly feeling was deepened in
Harry’s heart, and began to show itself in many
little attentions, after the death of Mr Sutterby.
He could not avoid seeing how the father’s
and mother’s affections were more and more drawn
away from their little son, while he keenly felt that
the poor child had done nothing to deserve it; so in
a plain and homely way he tried to draw him out of
himself, and made him as free of his pantry as his
sister was. And when Walter came, a few years
before Mr Sutterby’s death, putting Amos into
almost total eclipse, Harry would have none of this
third baby. “He’d got notice enough
and to spare,” he said, “and didn’t
want none from him.” And now a new cord
was winding itself year by year round the old butler’s
heart a cord woven by the character of
the timid child he had learned to love. He could
not but notice how Amos, while yet a boy, controlled
himself when cruelly taunted or ridiculed by his younger
brother; how he returned good for evil; and how, spite
of sorrow and a wounded spirit, there was peace on
the brow and in the heart of that despised and neglected
one. For he had discovered that, in his visits
to his aunt, Amos had found the pearl of great price,
and the old man’s heart leapt for joy, for he
himself was a true though unpretending follower of
his Saviour.
So Harry’s attachment to his
young master grew stronger and stronger, and all the
more so as he came to see through the more attractive
but shallower character of Walter, whose praises were
being constantly sounded in his ears by Mr Huntingdon.
And there was one thing above all others which tended
to deepen his attachment to Amos, which was Amos’s
treatment of his sister, who was still the darling
of Harry’s heart. Walter loved his sister
after a fashion. He could do a generous thing
on the impulse of the moment, and would conform himself
to her wishes when it was not too much trouble.
But as for denying himself, or putting himself out
of the way to please her, it never entered into his
head. Nevertheless, any little attention on his
part, spite of his being so much younger than herself,
was specially pleasing to Julia, who was never so
happy as when she and he could carry out by themselves
some little scheme of private amusement. Harry
noticed this, and was far from feeling satisfied,
observing to the housekeeper that “Master Walter
was a nasty, stuck-up little monkey; and he only wondered
how Miss Julia could be so fond of him.”
On the other hand, Amos always treated his sister,
even from his earliest boyhood, with a courtesy and
consideration which showed that she was really precious
to him. And, as she grew up towards womanhood
and he towards mature boyhood, the beauty and depth
of his respectful and unselfish love made themselves
felt by all who could value and understand them, and
among these was Harry. He could appreciate,
though he could not explain, the contrast between a
mere sentiment of affection, such as that which prompted
Walter to occasional acts of kindness to his sister
which cost him nothing, and the abiding, deep-seated
principle of love in Amos which exhibited itself in
a constant thoughtful care and watchfulness to promote
the happiness of its object, his beloved sister.
So Harry’s heart warmed towards
his young master more and more, especially when he
could not help noticing that, while Amos never relaxed
his endeavours to make his sister happy, she on her
part either resented his kindness, or at the best
took it as a matter of course, preferring and
not caring to conceal her preference a smile
or word or two from Walter to the most patient and
self-denying study of her tastes and wishes on the
part of her elder brother. The old man grieved
over this conduct in his darling Miss Julia, and gave
her a hint on the subject in his own simple way, which
to his surprise and mortification she resented most
bitterly, and visited her displeasure also on Amos
by carefully avoiding him as much as possible, and
being specially demonstrative in her affection to
Walter. Amos of course felt it deeply, but it
made no alteration in his own watchful love to his
sister. As for Harry, all he could do was to
wait in hopes of brighter times, and to console himself
for his young mistress’s coldness by taking
every opportunity of promoting the happiness and winning
the fuller confidence of the brother whom she so cruelly
despised.
But then came the crash; and this
well-nigh broke the faithful old servant’s heart.
She whom he still loved as though she were his own,
following her own unrestrained fancies, left her father’s
house to unite herself to a heartless adventurer before
she had reached full womanhood, and thus closed the
door of her old home against her. Then followed
a frightful blank. An allusion by the old butler
to “Miss Julia,” when the squire and he
were alone together, was met by a burst of violence
on his master’s part, and a threat that Harry
must leave if he ever again mentioned his old favourite’s
name to her father. So his lips were closed,
but not his heart; for he waited, watched, and prayed
for better times, even after a still heavier cloud
had gathered over the family in the removal of poor
Mrs Huntingdon, and all the love he had to spare was
given to his poor desolate young master, whose spirit
had been crushed to the very dust by the sad withdrawal
of his mother and sister from his earthly home.
Walter too was, of course, grieved
at the loss of his sister and mother, but the blow
was far lighter to him than to his brother, partly
from his being of a more lively and elastic temperament,
and partly because he did not, being so young a boy
when the sad events took place, so fully understand
as did his elder brother the shame and disgrace which
hung over the family through his sister’s heartless
and selfish conduct. His aunt soon came to supply
his mother’s place, and completely won the impulsive
boy’s heart by her untiring and thoughtful affection.
And one lesson he was learning from her, which was
at first the strangest and hardest of lessons to one
brought up as he had been, and that was, to respect
the feelings and appreciate, though by very slow degrees,
the character of his brother. His own superiority
to Amos he had hitherto taken as a matter of course
and beyond dispute. Everybody allowed it, except
perhaps old Harry; but that, in Walter’s eyes,
was nothing. Amos was the eldest son, and heir
to the family estate, and therefore the old butler
took to him naturally, and would have done so if he
had been a cow without any brains instead of a human
being. So said Walter, and was quite content
that a poor, ignorant fellow like Harry, who could
have no knowledge or understanding of character, should
set his regards on the elder son, and not notice the
otherwise universally acknowledged bodily and intellectual
superiority of his more worthy self. No wonder,
then, that pity more than love was the abiding feeling
in Walter’s heart towards his less popular and
less outwardly attractive brother. And it was
a very strange discovery, and as unwelcome as strange,
which his aunt was now leading him gradually to make
spite of himself, that in real sterling excellence
and beauty of character the weight, which he had hitherto
considered to lie wholly in his own scale, was in truth
to be found in the opposite scale on his brother’s
side of the balance. Very slowly and reluctantly
indeed was he brought to admit this at all, and, even
when he was constrained to do so, he by no means surrendered
at discretion to his aunt’s view of the matter,
but fought against it most vigorously, even when his
conscience reproved him most loudly. And thus
it was that a day or two after his conversation with
Miss Huntingdon on the moral courage exhibited by
Colonel Gardiner, he was rather glad of an opportunity
that presented itself of exhibiting his brother in
an unamiable light, and “trotting him out with
his shabby old horsecloth on,” as he expressed
it, for the amusement of himself and friends.
It was on a summer evening, and very hot, so that
Miss Huntingdon, her two nephews, and two young men,
friends of Walter, were enjoying tea and strawberries
in a large summer-house which faced a sloping lawn
enamelled with flower-beds glowing with masses of richly
tinted flowers. Mr Huntingdon was not with them,
as this was Bench day, and he was dining after business
hours with a brother magistrate. Walter, full
of life and spirits, rattled away to his heart’s
content, laughing boisterously at his own jokes, which
he poured forth the more continuously because he saw
that Amos was more than usually indisposed to merriment.
“By-the-by, Tom,” he said
suddenly to one of his companions, “what about
the boat-race? When is it to come off?”
“In September,” replied
his friend. “But we are in a little difficulty.
You know Sir James has lent us the Park for the occasion,
and a capital thing it will be; for we can make a
good two miles of it by rowing round the ornamental
water twice. It is to be a four-oared match;
four Cambridge against four Oxford men, old or young,
it doesn’t matter. It is to be part of
the fun on the coming of age of Sir James’s eldest
son. I rather think he was born on the eighth.
Young James is a Cambridge man and a capital oar,
and I’m of the same college, and so is Harrison
here, as you know, and we shall have no difficulty
in finding a fourth; but we are rather puzzled about
the Oxford men. We can calculate upon three,
but don’t know where to look for the fourth.
I wish, Walter, you’d been old enough, and
a member of the university.”
“Ay, Tom, I wish I had been.
But, by-the-by, there’s no difficulty after
all. Here’s Amos, an Oxford man, and a
very good oar too he’s just the very
man you want.”
It was quite true, as Walter said,
that Amos had been a good rower at the university.
Rowing was one of the few amusements in which he had
indulged himself, but he had never joined a racing
boat though often solicited to do so.
“What do you say, Amos?”
asked his young companion. “Will you join
us, and make up the Oxford four complete? We
shall be really much obliged if you will; and I’m
sure you’ll enjoy it.”
“Thank you,” replied Amos;
“it’s very kind of you to ask me, I’m
sure. I should have liked it had I been able
to undertake it, but I am sorry to say that it cannot
be.”
“Cannot be!” exclaimed
Walter. “Why, what’s to hinder you?”
“I cannot spare the time just
now,” said his brother quietly.
“Not spare the time! not
spare half-an-hour one fine afternoon in September!
Dear me! you must be oppressed with business.
What is it? It isn’t farming, I know.
Is it legal business? Have you got so many
appointments with the Lord Chancellor that he can’t
spare you even for one day?”
“It will not be only for one
day,” replied Amos quietly. “If the
race is to be a real trial of skill and strength we
must train for it, and have many practices, and I
cannot promise to find time for these.”
“Oh, nonsense! Why not? You’ve
nothing to do.”
“I have something to do, Walter,
and something too that I cannot give up for these
practisings.”
“What! I suppose you think
such vanities as these waste of precious time.”
“I never said nor thought so,
Walter; but I have a work in hand which will prevent
my having the pleasure of taking a part in this race,
for it really would have been a pleasure to me.”
“Ah! it must be a precious important
work, no doubt,” said his brother satirically.
“Just tell us what it is, and we shall be able
to judge.”
Amos made no reply to these last words,
but turned first very red and then very pale.
“Humph!” said Walter;
“I guess what it is. It’s a new scheme
for paying off the national debt, by turning radishes
into sovereigns and cabbage-leaves into bank-notes;
and it’ll take a deal of time and pains to do
it.” He laughed furiously at his own wit,
but, to his mortification, he laughed alone.
There was a rather painful silence, which was broken
by the gentle voice of Miss Huntingdon.
“I think, dear Walter,”
she said, “that you are a little hard on your
brother. Surely he may have an important work
on hand without being engaged in such a hopeless task
as attempting to turn radishes into sovereigns and
cabbage-leaves into bank-notes. And does it follow
that he despises your boat-race because he prefers
duty to pleasure?”
“Ah! that’s just it,”
cried Walter, in a tone of mingled excitement and
displeasure. “Who’s to know that
it is duty? I think one duty is very
plain, and I should have thought you would have agreed
with me here, and that is to give up your own way
and pleasure sometimes, when by doing so you may help
to make other people happy.”
“I quite agree with you in that,
Walter,” said his aunt. “It may be
and often does become a duty to surrender our own
pleasure, but never surely to surrender our duty.”
“True, aunt, if it’s really
duty; but some people’s duty means merely their
own fancy, and it’s very convenient to call that
duty when you don’t want to be obliging.”
“It may be so, Walter; but,
on the other hand, if we have seen cause even to impose
upon ourselves something as a duty, we are bound to
carry it out, although others may not see it to be
a duty and may call it fancy; and certainly we should
at least respect those who thus follow what they firmly
believe they ought to do, even though we cannot
exactly understand or agree with their views of duty.
So you must bear with Amos; for I am certain that
he would not say `No’ to you about the race
if he were not persuaded that duty stands in the way
of his taking a part in it.”
“Ah, well! happy Amos to have
such a champion,” cried Walter, laughing, for
he had now recovered his good-humour. “I
suppose you are right, and I must allow brother Amos
to have his duty and his mystery all to himself.
But it’s odd, and that’s all I can say
about it. Such short-sighted mortals as I am
can’t see those duties which are up in the clouds,
but only those which lie straight before our eyes.”
“And yet, Walter, there may
be the truest and noblest heroism in sacrificing everything
to these self-imposed duties, which you call
duties up in the clouds.”
“O aunt, aunt!” exclaimed
Walter, laughing, “are you going to be down
upon me again about moral courage? You have not
crossed your hands this time, and yet I daresay it
will do us all good, my friends here as well as myself,
to have a lesson on moral courage from you; so listen
all to my dear aunt. She is teaching me moral
courage by examples. Who is your hero, dear
auntie, this time?”
“Shall I go on?” said
Miss Huntingdon, looking round on her hearers; then
seeing an expression of interest on every countenance,
she continued, “Well, I will, if you wish it.
My hero to-day is John Howard.”
“Not a soldier this time, Aunt Kate.”
“Not in your sense, Walter, but one of the truest
and bravest in mine.”
“Pray, then, let us hear all about his exploits,
dear aunt.”
“You shall, Walter. His
exploits just consisted in this, that he imposed a
great duty on himself as the one object of his life,
and never let anything turn him from it, though obstacles
met him in every direction such as nothing but the
highest sense of duty could have nerved him to break
through. In the first place, he was of a weakly
constitution, and might therefore well have excused
himself from any unnecessary labours, and might have
indulged in luxuries which might almost have been
considered as necessaries to one whose appetite was
not strong. He could well have afforded such
innocent indulgence, for he was a man of good fortune.
He was, however, remarkable for his abstemious habits;
and having been led, when high sheriff of his county,
to look into the state of Bedford jail, he was so shocked
with the miserable condition of the prisoners and
their being crowded together in a place filthy, damp,
and ill-ventilated, that he set himself to make a
tour of inspection of all the county jails in England,
and soon completed it, and was examined before the
House of Commons on the state of our prisons.
And here he had to suffer from that misrepresentation
and misunderstanding which are too often the lot of
those who have set themselves to some great and noble
work. It seemed so extraordinary to some members
of Parliament that a gentleman, out of pure benevolence,
should devote himself to such a painful work, and run
the risk of contagion, that they could hardly understand
it; and one gentleman asked `at whose expense he travelled,’ a
question which Howard could scarcely answer without
some indignant emotion. You see, they could not
appreciate such exalted heroism; and surely it required
no little moral courage to persevere. But he
did persevere, and his work grew upon him.
“From England he went abroad,
and visited the prisons on the Continent, devoting
his time and fortune to the great work of discovering,
and, as far as might be, remedying, the abuses he
found in these sad places of misery and often cruelty;
and though he was introduced to the noble and the
great wherever he went, he paid no visits of mere ceremony,
but spoke out most fearlessly, even to the most exalted
in rank, about the abuses he found in the prisons
under their control. He had set himself one
great work to do, and he did it. Suffering, toil,
hardship were endured without a murmur. Ah!
was not this true heroism?
“And now I come to a point which
I want you, dear Walter, specially to notice.
Howard might have spent a portion at least of his
time when abroad in visiting the beautiful picture-galleries
and other works of art in the towns to which his great
work led him, but he never suffered himself to do
so. He would not even read a newspaper, lest
it should divert his thoughts from the one great purpose
he had in view. I am not saying for a moment
that he would have been wrong to indulge himself with
relaxation in the shape of sight-seeing and reading
the news; but surely when he made everything bend
to his one grand self-imposed duty, we are constrained
to admire and not to blame, far less to ridicule, his
magnificent heroism. Yes; he never swerved, he
never drew back; and, best of all, he did his work
as a humble and earnest Christian, carrying it on
by that strength and wisdom which he sought and obtained
by prayer.
“I cannot give you a better
summing up of my hero’s character than in the
words of the great Edmund Burke. I have them
here.” Saying which she opened a small
manuscript book containing extracts from various authors
in her own handwriting, which she kept in her work-basket,
and read as follows: “`He has visited
all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces,
or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate
measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor
to form a scale of the curiosities of ancient art;
not to collect medals, nor to collate manuscripts:
but to dive into the depths of dungeons, and to plunge
into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions
of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions
of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the
forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the
forsaken, and to compare the distresses of men in all
countries. His plan is original, and it is as
full of genius as it is of humanity. It was
a voyage of discovery a circumnavigation,
of charity.’ Such was Burke’s true
estimate of my hero. And surely never was a
nobler heroism it was so pure, so unselfish;
for when they would have erected a monument to him
in his lifetime, and had gathered large sums for that
purpose during his absence abroad, he at once put a
stop to the project on his return home. Am
I wrong, dear Walter, in taking John Howard for one
of my special moral heroes?”
“Not a bit of it, dear aunt.
I confess myself beaten; I give in; I hand over the
laurel crown to Amos: for I see that Howard’s
greatness of character was shown especially in this,
that he imposed upon himself a work which he might
have left undone without blame, and carried it out
through thick and thin as a matter of duty. Bravo,
Howard! and bravo, Amos, with your duty-work! three
cheers for you both! and one cheer more for Aunt Kate
and moral courage.” So saying, with a low
bow, half in fun and half in earnest, to Miss Huntingdon
and his brother, with a request to the latter to learn
the Canadian boat-song, “Row, Brothers, Row,”
at his earliest convenience, he left the summer-house,
taking his two friends with him.
Amos, who had been silent during the
latter part of the discussion, lingered behind for
a moment, and rising from his seat, took his aunt’s
hand between his own, pressing it warmly as he said,
in a voice subdued and trembling with emotion, “Thank
you, dearest aunt; I see you partly understand me
now. Some day, I hope, you may understand me
more fully.”