Christian, watching this venerable servant with curiosity, as a type novel to his experience, discovered suddenly that his scrutiny was being returned. Barlow, while listening attentively and with decorously slow nods of comprehension to what was being said to him, had his eyes fixed aslant, beyond his interlocutor’s shoulder, upon the young stranger. Christian encountered this gaze, and saw it waver and flutter aside, as from force of polite habit, and then creep back again. This happened more than once, and Christian began to feel that it had some meaning. He observed that the butler inclined his head at last and whispered something—his pale, wan old face showed it to be an inquiry—into the other’s ear. The action explained itself so perfectly that Christian was in no way surprised to see Lord Julius turn smilingly, and nod toward himself.
“Yes, he is Ambrose’s son,” he said. “He has come to take his place. I know you for one won’t be sorry—eh, Barlow?”
It was clear to the young man’s perceptions that Lord Julius spoke as to one who was a friend as well as a servant. The note of patriarchal kindness in the tone appealed gratefully to him, and the affectionate mention of his father’s name was sweet in his ears. A strange thrill of emotion, a kind of aimless yet profound yearning, possessed him as he moved forward. On the instant he realized that this was how he had expected to feel in the presence of his grandfather. The fact that the tenderness within him was appealed to instead by this gentle, sad-eyed old family dependant seemed to him to have something beautiful and very touching in it. Tears came into his eyes.
“You remember my father, then,” he said, and the breaking of his voice carried him into the heart of this sudden new mood of self-abandonment. “You would have known him as a little child—yes?—and you—you—” he paused, to dash away the tears with his hand, and strive to regain some control over his facial muscles—“you will have in your memory the good things about him—the boyish, pleasant things—and you loved him for them, did you not?”
Old Barlow, trembling greatly, and with a faint flush upon his white cheeks, stared confusedly at the young man as he advanced. “I held him on his first pony, sir,” he stammered forth, and then shook his head in token that he could utter no more. His glistening eyes said the rest.
Christian flung his arms round the surprised old man’s neck, and kissed him on both cheeks, and then, with head bowed upon his shoulder, sobbed aloud.