_DUKE AND DEFAULTER_
Bride made three steps forward and stood beside the horse ridden by the
young officer, the moonlight shining clear upon her, and adding to the
pure pale character of her beauty.
“Captain O’Shaughnessy,” she said gently, “I think you are making a
mistake about this man.”
In a second the young officer was off his horse and on his feet. He
recognised the speaker now, although his astonishment at such an
encounter at such an hour of the night--or rather morning, for the dawn
would soon begin to break--was past all power of expression.
“Lady Bride!--Can it be you? or do I see a ghost?”
“No, it is I,” answered the girl quietly; “I came out with our good
clergyman, Mr. Tremodart, to see if we could persuade our foolish
and misguided fishermen from St. Bride to come quietly home. We were
afraid they were bent on mischief. But we only came up as the crowd was
dispersing. Your prisoner there was refusing to permit an attack on the
machinery at Farmer Teazel’s, which the men were eager to make. That is
why I say that I think you are making a mistake in arresting him.”
The young officer, who had received hospitality from the Duke on
occasion, as all the officers of the regiment quartered near to
Pentreath did from time to time, looked from his prisoner to the lady
and from the lady to the prisoner in some perplexity, and then said
doubtfully--
“Do you not think you are mistaken, Lady Bride? Was not the man urging
them to make the attack?”
“No,” answered Bride at once. “He would have been willing to do so had
they marched upon my father’s place, where there would have been a
warm welcome for them, and hard fighting; but his followers were not
prepared for that. They wished to go where there would be little or no
resistance, and where they could effect their purpose with impunity.
But your prisoner there threatened to knock down the first man who
attempted such a thing, and his words had the effect of dispersing the
crowd. As you yourself saw, he was alone when you came up. But for him,
that dispersed crowd would have been in full march upon one of the
nearest farms here. Are you arresting him for that?”
“Faith no!” answered the young man, evidently rather nonplussed by the
lady’s story, and uncertain how to proceed. “Nevertheless this is the
man, as I take it, whom I was sent out to capture. Is not your name
Saul Tresithny?” he asked, turning towards the prisoner, who stood
perfectly still and quiet between his guards, making no attempt at
escape.
“Yes.”
“And you were leading the mob in Pentreath this night--helping to set
fire to the mills?”
“I was with them part of the time,” answered Saul fearlessly.
“And you are the man who makes speeches that sends them all stark
raving mad? I’ve heard of you, Saul Tresithny. I think it is high time
you had a taste of prison discipline.”
“I do what I can for the cause of freedom,” answered Saul, throwing
back his head with a gesture that was rather fine. “I cry death to
tyranny and tyrants wherever they be, but I’ll have no hand in harming
poor men’s goods. If my men would have marched on the castle to-night,
I’d have led them with all my best ability; but they had not the
stomach for it--poor, ill-fed wretches--one can’t wonder. Courage and
starvation are not wont to walk hand in hand, so they melted away like
a mist just before you came. But I am here, ready to lay down my life
for the cause, if that will be any good to it.”
The young officer shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the lady
with a gesture that spoke volumes.
“There, Lady Bride, you see what kind of a temper that fellow has got;
your pleadings are quite thrown away on such as he.”
“He is only repeating what he has been taught, and that by those who
should know better,” pleaded Bride gently, yet earnestly. “Captain
O’Shaughnessy, I have known that young man all my life, and until he
was led away by the voice of this cruel agitation he bore the best of
characters; and to-night he has dispersed a lawless mob by the strength
of his own determination. Men are not punished for their intentions but
for their deeds. He says he would have injured my father’s property;
but he did not do it. What he did do was all in the cause of law and
order. Mr. Tremodart, tell Captain O’Shaughnessy what we saw and heard;
then he will understand better that he is making a mistake about Saul.”
“I can only testify that what you’ve said is the truth, Lady Bride. I
can’t say, of course, what the young man has been doing earlier on; but
we came out to try and stop the boys of St. Bride from getting intu
mischief, which is a way they have when mischief is afloat; and we came
upon the young fellow making a speech which had the effect of sending
them tu the right-about and dispersing them. That’s all true as gospel;
but whether yu are justified in letting your prisoner escape yu, I
don’t profess to judge. Yu should know your duty better than we can
teach it yu.”
“And I’m afraid my duty is to arrest him and take him back to
Pentreath,” said the young man regretfully. “Lady Bride, I don’t like
doing anything against your wishes, but my orders were to ride after
the mob and disperse it, and capture Saul Tresithny if possible. I
don’t think I should be justified in letting him escape me after
that--once having my hands upon him. You wouldn’t wish me, I am sure,
to fail in my own duty and obedience?”
The young fellow spoke almost pleadingly, and Bride’s face changed.
The soft eager light went out of her eyes, and was replaced by one of
sadness and resignation.
“I must persuade no one to fail in duty and obedience,” she said, with
a sigh, “least of all one of his Majesty’s soldiers. But will you
remember all that I have spoken in his favour, and let it be known what
he did to-night?”
“Faith and I will. I’ll say everything I can in his favour--how he
didn’t resist us, but behaved as quietly and as well as possible, and
had sent all the people to the right-about before ever we had got up to
them. I’ll say everything I know for him, poor fellow. For he’ll need
it--with the charges they’ll bring against him.”
The soldiers, at a sign from their superior, had walked the prisoner
a little farther away, and Bride, looking anxiously into Captain
O’Shaughnessy’s face, asked, in a low voice--
“What charges will they bring?”
“Arson, for one thing,” answered the young man significantly. “You
see, there’s been a lot of damage done in Pentreath to-night, and it’s
pretty well known that Tresithny and another little cobbler fellow have
been the stirrers-up of all this turbulence. They’ve got the cobbler
fast enough; and now I’ve got Tresithny too. They’ll be examined
to-morrow before the magistrates, and most likely committed for trial.
It’s been a bad bit of business, and the country is getting exasperated
with all this senseless rioting and destruction of property. They make
signal examples now and again of ringleaders--just to try and deter
others.”
Bride turned very white in the dying moonlight.
“What do you think they will do to him?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Well, I can’t say. I’ll tell all you’ve told me, Lady Bride. I’ll
say what there is to say in his favour, for he’s a plucky fellow, and
deserves a better fate. He’d make an uncommon fine soldier, if he were
only in the ranks now. But many men have been hanged for less than
has been astir in Pentreath these past few days, and there’s a strong
feeling in the place against this fellow Tresithny.”
Bride caught her breath a little sharply, but her voice was quite calm
as she bowed her adieus to the young officer.
“Well, I must not detain you any longer, Captain O’Shaughnessy. I am
grateful to you for telling me the truth, and for promising to befriend
Saul Tresithny as far as you are able. You say he will be brought
before the magistrates to-morrow--does that mean to-day? It is their
day for sitting, I know.”
“To-day! why, to be sure it is to-day,” answered the young man, with
a short laugh. “Good morning, Lady Bride. I must be off after my men.
They have been out the best part of the night. I’ll say all I can for
that fellow Tresithny; but----”
He sprang on his horse, and the rest of the sentence, if it was ever
finished, was lost on Bride. She took Mr. Tremodart’s arm, and he felt
that she was trembling all over.
“This has been too much for you, Lady Bride,” he said, with his awkward
gentleness. “I ought not to have let you come.”
“It is not that,” answered Bride, in a very low voice. “I am not tired;
it is the thought of _that_. Oh, Mr. Tremodart, is it true?--can they
hang him for it?”
“The magistrates cannot hang him,” answered Mr. Tremodart; “and if he
is committed for trial, several weeks will elapse before the assize
comes on, and things may have happened to divert public attention; so
perhaps the feeling against him will not be running so high. All those
things make a great difference.”
“But have they hanged men before for this sort of thing?”
“Yes--they have certainly done so.”
Bride shuddered again. She spoke some words, as if to herself, in so
low a voice that he could not catch them; but he thought he heard the
name of Eustace pass her lips.
He shook his own head sorrowfully.
“I was afraid Mr. Marchmont was wrong in trying to stir up the people
to be discontented and rebellious. He meant well--all those reformers
mean well, and have a great deal on their side; but they go to work so
often in the wrong way, and their followers make the blunder ten times
worse. It’s not easy to say out of hand how the thing should be done;
but I take it they’ve not got hold of the right end of the stick yet.”
The two walked with rapid steps, their thoughts keeping them silent for
the most part. Bride’s mind was hard at work; her feelings were keenly
stirred within her. The burden of the song which kept ringing in her
ears was, “This is Eustace’s doing, this is Eustace’s work. Oh, how
can we let another die, and die perhaps unfit and impenitent through
his act, through his teaching? It must not be. Oh, it shall not be!
Saul must not die through Eustace’s fault!”
Bride had come to think of Eustace in a way she scarcely understood
herself. She had not greatly liked him on his visit. For many weeks she
had thought little of him, and later on, when she knew him better, she
saw too much in him to disapprove to grow in any way dependent upon
him. And yet since his departure she was conscious that he filled a
good deal of her thoughts, that she felt a certain responsibility in
his career, and that she was unable to help identifying herself with
him in a fashion she could neither understand nor explain.
True he had made her an offer of marriage, and had professed an undying
love for her. He had gone away half pledged to return and seek her
again; and no woman can be utterly indifferent towards a man who loves
her, especially when she is young, and has never known what it is to be
wooed before. Bride had shrunk back in justifiable reproof when Eustace
spoke of her as being the sun and star of his life, the elevating power
which could raise him to what heights she would; but none the less
did his words leave an impress on her sensitive mind, and gave her
much food for reflection. She was too well taught, as well as too full
of spiritual insight, to be confused by such an outburst, or to come
to look upon herself as responsible for the soul of the man who had
almost offered it to her to make what she would of; but she had begun
to wonder what she might be able to do for him by prayer and unceasing
intercession, and the thought was helping her to take a keener and more
personal interest in any matter in which Eustace was concerned than
would otherwise have been the case.
The dawn was breaking as Bride reached home, but she slipped up to her
room unobserved. She was too worn out and weary to think any more just
then; and slipping off her clothes and getting into bed, she fell into
a deep sleep, which lasted till the attendant came to rouse her in the
morning.
Refreshed by those few hours of dreamless sleep, but with her mind as
full as before of the events of the past night, she rose and dressed,
and found her way to the breakfast-room just as her father was entering.
The Duke’s face was very stern. He had just heard of the riots in
Pentreath. Mr. St. Aubyn had come half-an-hour earlier to speak to
him on the matter. He was on his way to Pentreath, for both he and
Mr. Tremodart, according to the prevailing custom of the day, were on
the magisterial bench, and he often came in on his way to a sitting
to consult the Duke on some point of law, or ask leave to look in
his many and valuable books for some information on a knotty point.
He was in the library at this moment, and the Duke was ordering some
refreshment to be taken to him there, as he had no time to come to the
breakfast-room.
When he saw his daughter, he greeted her with an air of abstraction;
and as the two sat at table together, he told her in a few words
the news which had reached him, and spoke of his own intention of
accompanying Mr. St. Aubyn to Pentreath, in order to make personal
inquiries and inspection as to the magnitude of the riot.
Bride listened in silence whilst he spoke; and then suddenly summoning
up all her own courage (for she had all her life stood in considerable
awe of her father), she told him in unconsciously graphic words the
whole story of her night’s adventure, and of the terrible peril now
menacing Saul Tresithny.
The Duke listened in silence, but evidently the story produced a
profound impression on him. His eyes never moved from his daughter’s
face as she proceeded, and at the end he sat perfectly silent for a
full three minutes before he put a sudden question--
“And why are you so keenly interested in the fate of this Saul
Tresithny, Bride? What is he more to you than the cobbler, for
instance, of whom Captain O’Shaughnessy spoke? Is it because he is a
St. Bride man--Abner’s grandson? Poor old Abner!--it will be a terrible
blow to him!”
“I think it will kill him if Saul is condemned to death,” said the
girl, with shining eyes. “Yes, papa, it is all that--I have known Saul
ever since I can remember anything--ever since I was a tiny child,
and he used to collect shells and seaweed for me, and make me boats
to sail. But it is not that quite--it is not only that he belongs to
our village, and that he is Abner’s grandson. That would always make
me interested in him, and dreadfully sorry if he got into trouble. But
there is another and a much greater reason than that. Oh, papa! surely
you know what it is!”
He was still looking at her earnestly. Little as Bride knew it, there
was at this moment in her face a look of her mother which the Duke
had never observed there before; her face was pale from her night’s
vigil, and from the stress of her emotion. Her dark eyes were full of
a liquid light, reminding him painfully of the dying brightness of his
wife’s eyes as she gave him her last solemn charge. Even the note of
appeal in the girl’s voice had something of the mother’s sweetness and
softness. Bride _had_ been growing increasingly like her mother during
the past months--many people had observed it; but her father had never
noticed it till now. Now the likeness struck him with a curious force,
and Bride noted that he seemed arrested by her words as had seldom been
the case before. But he made no verbal response, and she suddenly rose
and came over to him and knelt down at his feet, clasping her hands
upon the arm of his chair, and turning her sweet, quivering, earnest
face up towards him. Probably she would never have ventured upon this
demonstration before her unapproachable father, had it not been that
her sensitive spirit had received some instinctive consciousness of
sympathy new between him and herself. He laid his hand now upon her
clasped fingers, and the touch sent a quick thrill through her.
“Papa, Saul must not die!” she said, with intense earnestness of
resolve. “He must not die a traitor’s death, for the things he has done
are not prompted by his own imaginings. The words he has spoken are not
his own. It is Eustace who has done it all--Eustace who is the author
of all. Oh, papa, the punishment must not fall on Saul’s head. I think
it would break Eustace’s heart if he were to know that Saul had come to
his death like that.”
The Duke’s face was very dark and stern, but his sternness was not for
his child, as Bride knew by the pressure of the fingers upon her hand.
“Eustace should think of this before he sets about playing with
explosives. Could he not see that young Tresithny was not a man to be
stirred up with impunity? What a man sows, that shall he also reap.”
“Ah! truly he does! Oh, papa, I fear me the harvest Eustace will have
to reap will be a very bitter one; but, indeed, indeed Saul must not
die for Eustace’s fault. Eustace is our kinsman. He was here as our
guest. We cannot altogether shirk the responsibility of his deeds.
Papa, you will not let Saul die for what is the folly and sin of
Eustace. Ah! no. You will save him, I know. You will save him, for the
honour of the name of Marchmont!”
“What can I do. Bride? I have no power. I am not one of the
magistrates.”
“You are not a magistrate, but you have more power than any one in the
county,” answered Bride, with a smile so like her mother’s, that the
heart of the old man contracted first with pain, and then swelled with
a sense of new happiness. “Eustace would perhaps call it an abuse, that
one man should have so much power in his hands just because he had
wealth and lands; but I do not think that. I hold that if he uses his
power on behalf of true justice and true mercy, and in the cause of
Christ, it can be a power of great good to be used for the glory of God
and the blessing of man. _You_ will use your power so, dearest father,
will you not? Saul would have striven to do you hurt last night, not
from any personal enmity, but because he has been wrongly taught by our
own kinsman. You will go to-day and plead for him before his accusers,
and show him that the rich do not hate and oppress the poor, that the
great ones of the world can feel compassion and tenderness for those
who are deceived and led away, and that in them, and not in those who
raise the cry of hatred and bitterness, their friends are to be found.”
The Duke was silent for several minutes, and Bride did not disturb
him by so much as a word. He had laid his hand upon her head, and
was looking into her eyes with a glance she could not understand. In
very truth he was recalling the parting scene with his wife, the last
charge she had given him before the hand of death had been laid upon
those lips. It seemed to him as if now, all these months later, he was
listening to the echo of those words; and a strange wave of tenderness
swept over him, softening the hard lines of his face, and bringing into
it something which Bride had scarcely seen there before.
“You would have me stand before our ministers of the law as the
advocate of one who has been lawless, criminal, and the stirrer-up of
sedition? Am I to appear before our townsfolks as the supporter of
anarchy and arson?”
“No, but of mercy and goodwill towards the erring and deceived,”
answered Bride, “as the one man perhaps in the whole place who can so
stand fearlessly forward on the side of mercy, when he is known to be
held the greatest enemy to the public good, the bitterest enemy these
poor misguided creatures have. They hold you to be the embodiment of
all that is cruel and crushing--you will show them that you are their
best friend. You will plead for them, their ignorance, their inability
to see the falsity and folly of their teachers. You will show that Saul
has hitherto led an honest and industrious life; that till he was led
away by the teachings of Eustace, he was one of the steadiest men in
St. Bride. You will tell how he averted the attack on the farm last
night, and strive to gain mercy for one who has been only blinded and
maddened by others, and has within him the germs of so much that is
good. It is a first offence. Surely you can gain mercy for him! Oh, I
do not know how to bear the thought that Saul may have to die for what
is the fault of Eustace!”
The Duke sat very still, thinking deeply.
“You hold the fault to be Eustace’s?”
“Yes,” answered Bride, slowly and mournfully. “Other causes may have
helped, but Eustace set the ball rolling. He taught Saul discontent, as
he has tried to teach it to others. He thinks that that is the first
step towards trying to make men raise themselves. As Abner truly says,
it is beginning at the wrong end; but he cannot see that. If they would
but be discontented with themselves first--with their sinfulness, with
their vices--if they would rise higher by that repentance and cleansing
which would purify their hearts, then there would be hope for them
to rise in other ways. But to begin by stirring up all that is most
selfish and wicked, all the anger, hatred, and malice, which Christ
came down to destroy and overcome--ah! how can they look for good to
come? It never will and it never can.”
The Duke suddenly rose to his feet, for the clock had chimed the hour
of ten.
“I must be going if I am to go,” he said. “My child, you are your
mother’s daughter. Her voice speaks to me in yours. I will do what I
can for that miserable man, for her sake and yours.”
Her face quivered as she heard these words, and she turned away to hide
her emotion. He could not have spoken words which would more cheer her
than these which spoke of a likeness to her mother. Would she ever be
able in some small degree to take that vacant place with him?
The day seemed to pass wearily for Bride. Abner was not in the garden.
The Duke himself had sent him to the town to try and get speech of
his turbulent grandson, and to persuade him, if it were possible, to
comport himself with due humility, and without a needless show of
defiance before the magistrates that day. None knew better than the
Duke how much harm Saul might do to his own cause by an assumption
of defiance and impenitence before the arbiters of his fate; and
none knew better than he how little chance the young man stood if
he were once committed for trial at the County Assizes. Although
the spirit of reform was stirring all classes of the community, the
feeling against revolution was growing stronger in England with each
small outbreak--stronger, that is, in the eyes of the governing
powers--and signal examples were made of many obscure persons who
had been concerned in turbulent risings and riots. Once before the
criminal judges of the land, accused of arson, riot, and such-like
misdemeanours, a short shrift and a long halter were almost sure to be
his fate. All lay in the Duke’s power to avert a committal, and Abner
had been despatched with all speed to seek and use his influence with
the impracticable young man, that he might not tie a rope round his own
neck by some such speeches as he had made before Captain O’Shaughnessy.
The day seemed interminably long to Bride. She went down to the
fishing-village, and spoke earnestly with many of the men (now returned
home in that state of sheepish shame and satisfaction that betrayed
the fact of their having been engaged in some lawless but by no means
profitless undertaking) of the wickedness of such attacks on other
people’s property, and this spoiling of other people’s goods.
They listened to her grave gentle remonstrances in silence, half
ashamed of their conduct so long as her eye was upon them, never daring
in her presence to attempt the style of argument freely indulged in
alone. There was not one of those wild rough men who would have laid
a finger on this slight gentle girl, not though she was clad in gold
and jewels, or would have spoken a rough word or used an oath in her
presence. She and her mother had been and still were an embodiment
to them of something transcendently pure and holy: it was the one
elevating and sanctifying element in their lives; and many a man or
woman, when the hand of death seemed about to clutch them, had sent in
haste to know whether one of the ladies from the castle would come,
feeling that in such a presence as that even the king of terrors would
be robbed of half his power to hurt.
The day drew at last to its close, and Bride stationed herself at a
window to watch for the return of her father. She saw him at last
riding slowly up the ascent, with the servants behind him; and giving
him time to alight and reach the hall, she met him there with an eager
question on her lips.
“Oh, papa, what have you to tell me?”
“He is not committed for trial,” answered the Duke, as he moved slowly
across to his study, and sat down wearily in his own chair. “I could
not save him altogether, and perhaps it will be well for him to taste
prison discipline after what he has been doing these past weeks.”
“Prison! Oh, is Saul in prison?”
“He has been sent to jail for six months. It was the least sentence
that could well be passed upon him. There were two on the bench almost
resolved to make a criminal case of it; but as you say, my love, my
word goes a long way yet, and Mr. Tremodart and Mr. St. Aubyn and
another clergyman were on the side of mercy. Your story was told, and
it was corroborated by Captain O’Shaughnessy, and Saul’s previous
good character and steadiness up to the time he had been led away by
demagogues” (and a little spasm crossed the Duke’s face) “was all in
his favour. It was the first time he had been had up--a first offence
in the eyes of the law, though there were stories of months of conduct
the reverse of satisfactory to the authorities. Still he had dispersed
the crowd last night--no one could dispute that; and he was not proved
to have been present at the firing of the mills. The evidence on that
point was too confused and contradictory to go for anything. He denied
himself having been there, and we all believed he spoke the truth,
for he seemed almost reluctant to admit that he had not been in the
forefront of the riot. He had been attracted to the spot by the sight
of the flames, and had consented to head a march upon my yard. How
that ended you know. There was another ringleader who had headed the
arson mob, a cobbler, a well-known and most dangerous man. He was
committed for trial; there is no chance for him. His life will pay the
forfeit of his crime; but Saul Tresithny has escaped with six months’
imprisonment. Let us hope that he will have time and leisure in prison
to meditate on the error of his ways and come out a better and a wiser
man.”
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