And is there care in heaven? and is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is; else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts. But O th’ exceeding grace
Of highest God! that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels he sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.
SPENSER.
The village of Old Beech, which has been often named in this story as
the living of George Juxon, was a retired and picturesque place,
containing about three hundred inhabitants. Here, as at Cheddar, there
was no lord of the manor in residence. The principal owner of the
village lands for the last twenty years had been a Roman Catholic
gentleman, who, being single, and of a severe and gloomy temper of
mind, had, before this accession of property, embraced the monastic
life in Italy, and taken the vows as a brother of the Carthusian
order. The lessee of his estates had let them advantageously to four
substantial farmers; one of whom occupied the venerable old
manor-house. Its quaint wooden gables and ornamental carpentry always
arrested the attention of the passer by their venerable appearance.
A bay window, with five lights in two divisions, marked very
distinctly the situation of the great hall; a noble apartment used
only by the tenant as a vast store-room for the produce of his orchard
and his garden. The broad gates hung broken and decaying from the
square stone columns in which their hinges had been fastened by iron
staples, and the pavement of the court was half hid by rank weeds. The
church was small and ancient, and stood, not far from the manor-house,
on a gentle eminence, which commanded a beautiful flat of meadow-land,
watered by a small clear river that meandered through the fields in
fine and graceful curves, was richly fringed with willows, and turned
in its course two clean-looking busy mills. Not far from the
churchyard stood a tall and stately beech-tree, about two centuries
old, and near it the stump of the very tree from which the village had
been first named was still visible.
The smooth bark of this noble old beech was covered with initial
letters, true love knots, and joined hearts, rudely carved by rustic
hands, many of which, it might be seen by the dates affixed, had long
since mouldered under the grassy heaps, to which lowly beds of peace
the very same bell still tolled the parting summons of their lineal
descendants.
One of the most remarkable features in this pretty village was the
rectory. The basement story was completely built of glazed bricks in
checkered patterns, while that over it was constructed of fine massive
black timbers, the walls being plastered between; the whole was
surmounted with elevated overhanging roof and lofty gables. The
entrance was through a fine long porch of timber, and the woodwork of
this, as well as of the projecting portions of the roofs and gables,
was elaborately ornamented after the fashion of the fifteenth
century. Of Juxon’s habits something has already been said, but a
more particular account of his home life is necessary to show him
faithfully in the relation in which he stood to his parish. Having a
private fortune, in addition to the proceeds of his living, he was as
able as he proved himself always willing to benefit his people. When
he came first among them he found them much neglected and in great
darkness: his first step was to establish a school, and to win the
hearts of the parents through their children, all of whom he had
taught to read, and many of the most promising yet further instructed
in writing and arithmetic. A few of the old villagers, and one of the
most acute of his farmers, who, though unable to read himself, was
well furnished with all that worldly wisdom which may be orally
conveyed in pithy proverbs, and committed to memory for practical
guidance in life, resisted this strange innovation. But steady
perseverance and good-humoured resolution soon conquered all
opposition; and Juxon had the satisfaction of seeing around him much
improvement in that knowledge which makes the mind, and _the heart_
of man, accessible to the light of divine truth.
He was diligent in his duties, open in his manners, cheering in his
words, and wise in his charities; he distinguished well between the
objects of them, knew how to give, and when and what; he farmed his
own glebe, partly as an amusement, and also to set a good example
before his farmers of just behaviour to labourers. He understood
cottage economy as well as the most prudent among them; could talk
with them over the wickets of their little gardens about their
succession crops, and about the fattening of their pigs and poultry,
and knew every poor man’s cow upon the village common.
The happy children upon the green never paused in their merry games
when he passed them, and the winner of a race was doubly pleased if
Master Juxon’s eye had seen his triumph. The rough blacksmith, when,
at breathing times, he stood out under the shade of the ancient and
hollow oak near which his shed had been erected, always tried to
engage him in a little talk; and although these brief colloquies were
commonly of simple occurrences, yet the sturdy smith forgot not the
dropped word of advice, and he sung his part in the village quire
o’Sundays with his understanding as well as with his fine deep voice.
It might be truly said, that the parson of Old Beech was popular in
his parish, and deserved to be so. A hogshead of wheat, and another of
pease or barley, stood ever in his hall, out of which the aged widows
and the poor housekeepers of the village were always liberally
supplied in their need. He would patiently listen to their long and
prosy tales about their family as they sat in his hospitable porch,
without hurrying them, though perhaps they had told him the same story
for weeks in succession. But if an angel from heaven dwelt among three
hundred human beings, and passed his life in acts of love and kindness
towards them, he should not want enemies, nor should he reap gratitude
and good will from all; therefore Juxon was regarded by a small and
envious knot with evil eyes. Of this party, a small chandler or
grocer, a publican, and one of the millers, who was sinking into
poverty from slothful habits, were the leaders, and the worthy rector
had sense enough to know that in due time they would show their enmity
openly.
However, with the answer of a good conscience, he walked about daily,
without the shadow of a fear, and lay down to sleep in peace, well
knowing that God alone can make any of us to dwell in safety. Within
the last two years many things had occurred to awaken his own mind to
more serious views than those with which he had at first entered upon
the ministerial office. The questions concerning scandals among the
clergy engaged his serious attention; and his opinions about the
lawfulness, or rather the expediency, of some practices, the good or
evil of which he had never previously considered, now underwent a
change.
He would never admit for a moment, that to hunt, or to shoot, or to
fish, were diversions _inherently_ sinful; but he began to look on
time as a talent, for which every man must render a solemn account,
and the time of a clergyman as more especially given him to be
employed to graver ends than could be honestly and effectually
attained, if sports and amusements of a nature so idle and absorbing
were not resigned. Nor was this the only change in his opinions;--a
closer study of the sacred volume, for the purpose of preaching its
saving truths more plainly to his people; an earnest desire to set
before them the glory of gospel hopes, and the comfort of Scripture
promises; and a lively recollection of some of his conversations with
Cuthbert Noble, satisfied him that if he would be found faithful he
must preach, with authority and with persuasion, free reconciliation
to God through a willing and all-sufficient Saviour.
The prayerful exercises to which the composition of his sermons now
compelled him produced a blessed influence on his own spirit; and he
never stood up in his pulpit, as an ambassador for Christ, without a
most affectionate solicitude for the welfare of immortal souls, and a
present sense of the high privilege and deep responsibility of his
sacred office. His growing seriousness, as a clergyman, had been more
apparent to Katharine Heywood than to any one else at Milverton; for
she was too deeply taught to be deceived in the evidences of a living
grace. In his parish his earnestness in his pulpit was well known, as
might be seen from the report of it which had reached Sir Charles
Lambert, and which partly caused those taunts and insinuations, the
issue of which, in the quarrel and the encounter that followed, has
been already related; but to common observers, as Juxon’s language had
no peculiar religious phraseology, and as his manners, his happy
countenance, and his manly habits, prepossessed their good opinion,
without alarming any of their prejudices, he seemed one of themselves,
and they neither knew nor cared to know his inner man.
However, as Juxon and Sir Charles rode back slowly to Milverton after
the violent scene which might have terminated so awfully for both, he
was determined not to lose so favourable an occasion for setting
before the softened transgressor the great and common evil of man’s
nature, and the blessed remedy. He did this with a feeling, a
faithfulness, and a humility which surprized and affected his silent
companion greatly, and which at last drew from him a confession of a
most interesting kind. He told Juxon that, from his earliest
childhood, he had found himself an object of dislike and aversion to
all his family; that his elder brother, his senior only by one year,
had been the indulged and favoured pet both of his father and mother,
while he had been always either treated with neglect or addressed in
the language of unkindness and reproach; that hate had begotten hate,
and that he had passed his early youth hating and hateful; that at the
age of sixteen, as his brother was out shooting on the manor, he lost
his life by the accidental discharge of his own gun, as he was
carelessly forcing his way through some thick furze bushes. He
confessed that he was inwardly rejoiced at this calamity; that he
looked upon the corpse without one emotion of sorrow or even of pity,
and that he viewed with a malignant satisfaction the agony of his
parents, more especially that of his mother, whose persecution of him
had been perpetual, and of a petty and irritating nature. This feeling
of his was so irrepressible as to be seen. The thought that their
despised boy should inherit the estates and the title had proved so
very intolerable to his mother that she could not endure his presence
at home. He was therefore sent away, and placed under the charge of a
severe tutor, who, finding him the ignorant and evil-disposed youth
which the letters of his father had represented him, governed him with
strictness, and instructed him with an evident contempt for his want
of capacity and for his backwardness in those attainments which, in
truth, it had been impossible for him to acquire; it having been the
mean pleasure of his mother to deny him the advantages enjoyed by his
brother. He related the story of his mother’s funeral, to which he was
called after an absence of two years, and the death of his father,
which had taken place four years later, while he himself was abroad.
It appeared by these accounts that subsequent to the death of his
brother he had never enjoyed or indeed desired any intercourse with
his parents, and that when he came to take possession of the estates,
he found his sisters, who were much younger than himself, grown up and
left to his protection. As they were not mixed up in his mind with the
injuries of his childhood, such little kindness as he had ever felt
capable of he had entertained for them. But even here he stated he had
found disappointment; for one being timid and of no character, feared
him, while his sister Jane, the only being who had ever behaved well
to him, he nevertheless knew did not, and perhaps could not, love him
as a brother.
This confession was poured into the ear of a generous and a thoughtful
Christian, deeply skilled in the diseases of the human heart. It was
evident to Juxon that the depravity of our fallen nature, common to
all, had, in the miserable heart now laid bare before him, been
inflamed by the early unkindness of parents, and had taken the dark
colours of a rancorous and cruel disposition. Yet, even in this
apparently desperate case, there was a ray of hope, there was a light
of that mysterious something which may be observed in the human heart,
as a fragment of its better nature that has survived the fall,--_a
capacity of loving_; which, as it could find no issue towards man,
exhibited itself in a rare kindness and affection to dogs, horses, and
birds. To these living creatures Sir Charles, who was to man
indifferent or cruel, showed himself gentle, patient, and fond. Juxon
had often observed this with pleasure: he now caught this golden
string, and by it he led up the mind of his hearer to contemplate the
God of creation upon a throne of universal love, caring for the
meanest of his creatures, and revealing himself more especially to man
in the relation of Father. Thence, by a swift transition, he painted
man (_the whole race_) prodigal, miserable, naked, feeding with swine,
till returning to their Father they were forgiven and with embraces;
nor, while he fixed attention upon the mighty Saviour, from whose
gracious lips this parable proceeded, did he fail to preach Jesus as
the incarnation of Divine love, reconciling the lost children of earth
to their heavenly Father, waiting to be gracious. He did not thus
speak in vain:--who shall dare to look down upon any human being as
lost, hardened, reprobate? Who maketh men to differ? Who can make the
rock yield water, and dry up the Euphrates? He who can change flesh
into stone when it is his pleasure.
But we return to show the connection of what has passed with the
progress of our story.
It was a most welcome sight to the family at Milverton, to see Juxon
and Sir Charles return amicably together after the quarrel of the
morning; but there was something, nevertheless, very inexplicable in
the manners of both. Those of the former were far more serious and
absorbed than Katharine had ever observed them before; while the
latter had an embarrassed air, a softened tone of voice, and an
expression of deep, real, unaffected sorrow in his countenance.
Whatever had passed between them, it was evident that the
reconciliation was on both sides of the sincere nature of hearty
forgiveness. As Katharine contemplated the brow and the features of
Sir Charles, she discerned traces of a mental working such as she had
never seen at any previous period of their frequent intercourse; and,
for the first time, she looked on him without aversion and without
suspicion.
To his great honour, and as the strongest proof of the good effect
wrought on him by the events of that memorable day, he took the first
opportunity that offered, to declare, in the absence of Juxon, the
circumstances of their rencontre, and the generous conduct of his
noble antagonist.
There is a something in the honest avowal of shame, and the honest
recognition of another’s excellence, which, as it can only proceed
from a humbled and subdued heart, so it will instantly engage the
approval of every well constituted mind.
From that very hour Sir Charles found himself regarded by all at
Milverton with a new feeling,--all countenances were changed towards
him: he had gotten a friend in Katharine,--he found the eyes of his
sister Jane ever resting upon him, with a new and strange delight: Sir
Oliver, to whom discord was trouble, and who had never wholly
resigned the hope of having Sir Charles for a son-in-law, was beyond
measure gratified; and Arthur felt a more undoubting confidence and
ease at the thought of serving under him than he had hitherto
admitted.
A sense of all these mercies, a consciousness that he was drawn with
the cords of love by an invisible hand, deepened his repentance and
humility, and gave life, strength, and love to his new-born faith; but
all this was a secret work, in which he was wisely assisted by the
prudent counsel and the sound judgment of Juxon. It was fortunate,
that, amid the stirring and necessary duties of those times, he was
provided with so plain, so manly, so healthy an adviser. Side by side,
with a profound self-abasement, grew a sentiment of self-respect, that
prevented his spirit being paralysed, or cast down below the right
degree of energy required of him by his position at the moment. He was
now truly prepared, in a more noble frame of mind, to render good and
faithful service wherever the cause of his king and country might
lead him. Now, too, he understood and respected the motives which
decided Juxon to remain at his own proper post, and to perform his own
sacred duties to the last moment.
In the fortnight which passed about this period he lived long; that
is, he gathered the experience which is usually the fruit of a much
longer space of time.
Swiftly as the days glided by, they fully developed the love of Juxon
and Jane Lambert; and, although Katharine could not persuade Juxon to
hear of Jane’s being exposed to the inconvenience and danger of
becoming his wife, at a time when the clergy might expect a
persecution, yet she did enjoy the happiness of seeing them seated
before her in the sweet and interesting relation of avowed and
betrothed lovers.