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.