_TWO ENCOUNTERS_
Bride was riding slowly down the hill from St. Erme’s on her little
Exmoor pony, with a grave and sorrowful face. Around her the green
billowy downs stretched away in all their bright spring greenness,
overhead the larks were carolling as though their hearts were filled
with rapture, whilst far below the sea tossed and sparkled in the
brilliant sunshine in a fashion that was exhilarating and gladsome.
It was a day late on in March--one of those days not unfrequent at that
season, especially in the south and west--a day that seems filled with
a promise of coming summer--a day in which all nature rejoices, which
stirs the pulses and sets the blood coursing joyously, and fills the
air with subtle promises of life and hope.
Bride’s face had been tranquil and happy as she rode up the heights
towards Farmer Teazel’s farm, but it was sorrowful and troubled now as
she returned, for she had failed in the mission on which she had been
bound, and was experiencing one of those revulsions of feeling which
often follow upon a period of solitary meditation and resolve, when the
dreamer is brought face to face with the stern realities of human life
and human nature.
Bride’s mission to the farm had been to plead with the farmer to offer
a place in his service to Saul Tresithny, now just out of prison. His
sentence had been up a few weeks earlier, but he had been ill of fever
in the prison hospital when the period of release came, and had only
that week been set at liberty.
All through the term of his imprisonment Bride’s thoughts and her
prayers had been much exercised with him. The compassion she felt
towards him partook of the nature of a great yearning tenderness,
curious in a girl of her age and station, and she could not help
believing that her feelings must be in some sort reflected in the minds
of others. Her father she knew felt compassion for Saul, though he
seldom spoke his name. Abner, as was natural, yearned over his grandson
with a great love and tenderness, and both Mr. Tremodart and Mr. St.
Aubyn were interested in him, and were willing to give him occupation
in their service on his release, if he would accept it. But Saul’s
known aversion to service in any of its branches was too well known in
the place for any one to have much hope of his falling in with either
of these offers. Abner shook his head whenever he was questioned on the
subject, and said he feared Saul had not changed or softened with his
incarceration. But the thought came to Bride that if his old master the
farmer, with whom he had always got on so well, would offer him his old
place at the farm, that offer would be accepted, and she had gone up to
talk poor Saul’s case over with the kind-hearted yeoman, and get him to
see the matter in the light that she herself viewed it.
But only disappointment and sorrowful surprise awaited her here. Farmer
Teazel _was_ a thoroughly kind-hearted man, and very fond indeed of the
little Lady Bride, whom he had known ever since her infancy. He loved
to see her riding up to his farm on the pony of his own breeding and
choosing. He was all smiles and kindness till her subject was broached,
and then she found that there was a limit to his benevolence, and to
the influence she had over him--a barrier like a ledge of hard rock
against which her arguments rebounded helplessly.
Saul Tresithny had sinned in a fashion the farmer could not forgive,
and he had no pity upon misfortune deliberately run into by a man who
has had every opportunity of knowing better. The fact that Saul had
averted the attack upon his own homestead did not weigh with him here.
He argued that Saul had had his revenge on his (the farmer’s) machines
before this. The sturdy yeoman had his own grievance against Saul
and his teaching, and was not disposed to be grateful for the other
deliverance. No, Saul was a reprobate and a jail-bird, and he would
have none of him. He had had enough of the mischief his tongue did
before. It wasn’t in reason he should put up with it again. No, no; he
was sorry to refuse Lady Bride anything; but ladies did not understand
these things--did not understand the nature of great, ill-conditioned
demi-gods (as he called it in his haste) such as Saul had become. It
was no use talking to him of forgiveness and mercy. It would be time
enough for that when the man had repented. He hadn’t ever learned that
there was any call to forgive before the sinner was sorry. From all he
heard, Saul wasn’t a bit humbled or penitent. It would only be the old
trouble over again if he came back; the farmer would take care he had
nothing more to do with such a fellow.
When Bride had exhausted her eloquence upon the farmer, and he had
gone out to his work again, she tried what she could do with the
daughter; but Genefer was even more impracticable than her father. Half
ashamed of ever having given encouragement to Saul, who had behaved so
cavalierly to her afterwards, she was bitterly set against him, and did
not pick her words when launching forth about him. Moreover, Genefer
was now openly betrothed in marriage to young Farmer Hewett, and was
mortally afraid lest he should ever hear that she had permitted Saul
to make love to her. She would not for anything in the world have had
him again at the farm, and Bride was forced to ride away downcast and
sorrowful, wondering in her heart how it was that people of the same
class were so hard upon one another, and musing by degrees on the
result to the community of a gradual change which should practically
throw the governing power into the hands of the masses. Would that
power be exercised on the side of mercy and love, or would it become
only a new form of tyranny and hardness, far more difficult to modify
and soften than any monarchical harshness of rule? It was a question
she could not answer, but it helped to keep her face grave and her brow
sad as she rode slowly down the hill, rode right down by the rough
lane to the cottages upon the shore, where she had an errand of mercy
to perform; and leaving her pony to nibble at the salt herbage at the
base of the rocks, as he loved to do, she walked forward alone towards
the margin of the sea, and came suddenly and quite unexpectedly face
to face with Saul Tresithny, who was sitting in the hot sunshine on a
rock, and gazing out over the sea, with those strange dark eyes of his
that gleamed with sombre fire.
She knew that he was free, but thought him still at Pentreath, he
having refused to come to his grandfather’s cottage on his release. The
recognition was mutual, and the man instinctively, though sullenly,
rose to his feet. Bride glanced up at the tall towering figure, which
looked taller than before in the gauntness of recent illness. There was
something rather terrible in the gloom of the cadaverous face. Saul
had been stricken down with that terrible fever which was so common in
prisons during the previous century, and went by the significant name
of jail-fever, and which still lingered about those prisons which were
overcrowded or unsanitary, and generally claimed for its victims those
who were unused to confinement and a close atmosphere, and had led an
open-air life hitherto.
The terrible sufferings Saul had endured during six months of
imprisonment were too clearly written on his face to evade observation.
What such incarceration meant to one of his nature and training can
only be realised by those who have lived the life he had hitherto led,
and have been out in the open air from dawn till dark every day of
their lives, summer and winter, from boyhood. Bride shrank back as she
saw his face, with a sense akin almost to terror; but then her sense of
Divine compassion and tenderness for the wild impenitent prisoner came
back with a bound, and she put out her little gloved hand and laid it
on his arm.
“Saul, I have been so sorry for you, so very sorry,” she said, softly
and gently. “But it is over now, and you have life still before you.
You will learn to----”
“To forget? never!” interrupted he, with a strange flash in his eyes.
“I will never forget, ay! and never forgive, to the end of my days.
Stacked like pigs in a stye, crowded together in hunger and dirt,
and wretchedness unspeakable, the best man amongst them hanged by
the neck till he died, and all for preaching the gospel of truth to
a down-trodden people, that is what England has to look for from her
rulers! That is what we have to look forward to who strive to raise
our brothers from abject misery and degradation. Forget! No, I will
never forget. I will avenge those months of misery, and the death of my
best and truest friend; ay! I _will_ avenge it on the proud heads of
the tyrants of this land. Don’t come near me, don’t speak to me, Lady
Bride. I would not hurt you willingly; but there is that within me that
may prompt me to do you a mischief if you stand there much longer. Go,
I say, go! You are a woman; I believe you are a good and a merciful
woman; but you come of a race that is doomed. Go, let me never see you
here again! Look to yourself, and let your father look to himself, for
they have made a Cain and an Ishmaelite of me; and I will be in very
truth what they have made me. I will give them cause to tremble!”
But Bride looked at him with quiet fearlessness, sorrowful, yet not
afraid. That the fever and weakness, combined with long months of
brooding and suffering, had partially clouded his brain, she could well
understand. His threats did not alarm her. She knew he would never lay
a finger upon her.
“I am very grieved for you, Saul,” she said again. “It has been very
hard to bear, and the more so because all the while you believed
you were doing right. That is what is so hard to understand in this
world--how to do right without doing wrong too; and there is only one
Power that can help us to know that. I hope some day you will learn to
know that Power, and see with unclouded eyes. Meantime, if you will let
me, I should like to help you and to be your friend. I think you know
that you may trust me, even though you may not be able to help hating
me.”
He looked at her with a strange expression in his hollow eyes that
sometimes burned so brightly, and sometimes were clouded over with a
mist of bewilderment and semi-delirious imaginings. He looked at her as
though about to speak, but then suddenly closing his lips, he turned
hastily away and walked rapidly, though a little unsteadily, in the
opposite direction; whilst a woman from a neighbouring cottage came
hurrying out, and Bride saw that Mother Clat was approaching.
“’Tidden wise o’ yu tu talk wi’ yon lad out heer alone, Laady Bride.
He be maazed wi’ t’ prison vever, he be,” she said anxiously, with a
backward glance over her shoulder at the retiring figure of Saul. “Duee
go tu home now, and letten ’lone tu coom tu hisself. Yu’ll on’y be
aggin’ he on to du wusser ef zo be as yu try to talk un zoft.”
“I am very sorry for him. He looks very ill,” said Bride
compassionately. “Do you know where he is living now?”
“He du be bidin’ wi’ me these past tu daays,” answered the woman; “I
wunt zay how long he’ll bide. He’s gotten zome money, an’ he’s a rare
hand wi’ th’ bwoats. I reckon he can maake a shift to live down along
wi’ we, ef zo be as he’s got a mind tu.”
“Take care of him, then,” said Bride pleadingly. “I think he wants care
and good food whilst he looks so thin and gaunt. Give him all you think
he needs, and I will take care you are no loser. Don’t say a word to
him, but just let me know. See, I will leave this crown with you now.
Get him everything he ought to have. I never saw anybody so dreadfully
changed before.”
The woman took the coin and nodded. She was perfectly to be trusted,
despite the peculiarity of her position in St. Bride as the known ally
of smugglers, and the cleverest hider and concealer of contraband
goods in the place. Bride perfectly recognised the distinction between
general dishonesty and this particular sin, so common in those days
amongst men otherwise upright and trustworthy. She left the bay a
little comforted by learning that Saul had at least a roof over his
head, and was amongst men who liked and trusted him. Mother Clat was,
with all her witch-like aspect and rough speech, a kind-hearted woman,
and would do her best for her lodger. Saul was better here by the salt
sea waves than in some poor lodging in Pentreath. Evidently the death
of the cobbler and the scattering of the little band of malcontents
had for the time shattered his dream of becoming a semi-professional
agitator. The fascination of the blue sea, the boundless sky, and the
tossing salt waves had drawn him back to St. Bride’s. If only some
gentler influence could be brought to bear upon him, he might yet
become a changed character with patience and time.
“If Eustace could see his pupil now, what would he think?” questioned
the girl to herself, as she rode up the rough beach path; and she
wondered to herself whether his influence, could it be brought to bear,
would be for good or for ill--though this seemed but idle speculation,
as Eustace was far away in London, and she did not think he would
visit Penarvon for long enough to come. Musing thus, she turned in at
the lodge gate and rode quietly up the zigzag track through the pine
wood, till, arriving at the point where the road divided, she took the
right-hand fork and rode direct to the stable-yard, and three minutes
later reined in her pony in the big enclosure, a groom coming forward
to assist her to dismount.
Three strange horses stood tied up in the yard, looking as though they
had been ridden somewhat hard that day. Stablemen were grooming them
down with assiduity, the head-coachman looking on and making remarks
from time to time to his subordinates. As he saw his young mistress he
came respectfully forward.
“Has some visitor arrived?” she asked, with a glance at the strange
horses; but there was no need for the man to answer. At that moment
a tall figure entered the yard through the door of the covered way
leading from stable-yard to house--entered hurriedly, as though to give
some forgotten order, and Bride found herself face to face with her
cousin Eustace.
They both started slightly, but Bride recovered herself immediately,
and quietly offered her hand.
“This is an unlooked-for pleasure,” she said gently; and his face
flushed from brow to chin beneath the bronze of the sunny journey in
March shine and blow.
“Thank you,” he answered, pressing her hand gratefully; and then,
turning for a moment to the coachman, he gave the instruction in
reference to his horse which he had come to deliver. That done, he
turned once more to Bride and said--
“Your father is not within--he has ridden out too. I thought I should
have to wait for any welcome. I trust that I have not taken an
unwarrantable liberty in coming thus unannounced, but I have news that
I thought would interest the Duke, and it is necessary that I should
have personal speech with him.”
“I am sure my father will bid you welcome to Penarvon,” answered Bride,
with gentle dignity. “I trust the news that you bring is good and not
bad.”
“I trust so myself. It is news that cannot fail to stir all hearts more
or less at such a time. Parliament is dissolved. There is to be a new
appeal to the electors of the country!”
Bride paused to look at her cousin’s face, which was full of an
enthusiasm and glad hopefulness that was almost infectious. Instead
of taking the covered way back to the castle, the cousins were slowly
following the longer road by which horses and carriages travelled.
Bride caught her long skirt up with one hand, the other held her whip.
Her face was flushed with the surprise of this second unlooked-for
encounter. Eustace thought he had never seen her look more lovely than
at this moment, in the close-fitting habit and picturesque hat with its
waving plume.
“A dissolution!” she exclaimed; “I thought the king was altogether
averse to that. I thought your bill had just achieved its second
triumph.”
“It has, and it has not. The papers have kept you conversant with the
bald facts of the case. But what it comes to is this, that without a
more powerful majority than we have now, such a measure as ours cannot
be successfully passed through the House. It would be so mauled and
mutilated in committee that it would utterly fall to pieces. We must
know now what the country feels on this great question. We must feel
the pulse of the nation. It is the only thing to do. The king was
against the measure; but the voice of wisdom prevailed. As soon as his
consent was gained, I took horse and started off. I wished to be the
first to bring the news to Penarvon. Tell me, Bride, what have these
six months done for my uncle in modifying or changing his views on this
question? He now knows the just and moderate terms of the bill. Does he
feel against it all the same prejudice he did at the outset, when we
none of us knew exactly on what lines it had been framed?”
“I do not think he feels any very great hostility to the present bill,”
answered Bride quietly. “He has fully recognised that there are abuses
with regard to the representation of the country that may well be
mended, and on the whole I think he admits the present measure to be
moderate and wise. But he knows as well as you know that this is only
the beginning, and whilst you approve heart and soul the movement of
which it is the pioneer, he distrusts and dreads it. That is why the
success of even a wise measure fills him with no enthusiasm. He still
believes that the abuses which will grow up under your new régime,
when it is established, will far transcend those which flourish under
the old, and that sin and want and misery will increase rather than
diminish. That is as much as I can tell you of his opinions, for he
does not talk of this thing often. The subject is rather a painful one
to him. It brings with it a sense of helplessness, a sense of drifting
away from the old moorings into a troubled sea for which he has no
chart or compass. I think he knows that the thing must be; but he does
not look forward with joy to the future it will bring in its wake.”
“At his age that is perhaps natural,” answered Eustace. “He is a more
liberal-minded man than many of his generation and position. I am
thankful he is not bitter in opposition, for I shall want something
from him that he might be very loth to give did he feel as some do.”
Bride turned to look at him. Eustace was flushed and excited. His face
had grown more intent and earnest during the past months. Bride thought
that his expression was improved; but just at this moment he was more
excited than she had ever seen him before. She wondered at the reason.
“I have come to ask a favour of your father, Bride,” he said, as they
reached the castle, and instead of passing through the gateway and
entering the hall, skirted round the building till they stood upon the
magnificent stone terrace that overhung the sea on the west side. “Do
you think he will grant it me?”
“A favour!--what favour?” asked Bride, looking wonderingly at him,
with steady fearlessness in her eyes. She was no longer shy with him,
for her instinct told her that it was not on an errand of love-making
that he had come. The last time they talked together alone he had been
seeking for her love; now he had other matters foremost in his mind.
The individual was sunk in the cause. Almost before the words of his
answer were spoken, she guessed what they would be; yet she heard them
almost with surprise.
“Bride, this next Parliament will be one that will mark an epoch in the
world’s history; I feel that I must take my share in it. I am a man
young and untried, but I feel that I can serve my country in its need.
I long to be one of its legislators in the coming struggle, which will,
I know, be a triumphant one. I have come to ask your father for the
seat which he has in his own hands. He almost offered it to me once.
Will he give it to me now, do you think, when I come to solicit it at
his hands?”
Bride’s eyes expressed a grave surprise.
“A pocket borough, as you have called them, Eustace? I thought the
system of pocket boroughs was utterly abhorrent to you--one of the
abuses which most cried for redress!”
“Yes--and I long to be one of the legislators who shall abolish the
abuse!” cried Eustace eagerly. “I would sweep all such anomalies from
the face of the earth; but to assist in the battle with all my powers,
I must be entitled for once to sit in the next Parliament.”
Bride said nothing. She looked away from Eustace over the sea, and he
saw that a shadow had fallen on her face.
“What is it, Bride?” he questioned quickly, feeling the sense of her
beauty and purity again stealing over him like a charm. He had fancied
after all these months that he could meet her without emotion, but
already he felt the old fascination creeping over him.
“I am sorry,” answered Bride gently, “I am sorry--that is all.”
“Sorry about what?” he asked quickly.
“Sorry that you feel like that--that you can stoop to such a thing.”
He started as though something had stung him.
“I do not understand you,” he said, with a certain hauteur in his tone
and a look of pain in his eyes.
She raised hers to his and looked him full in the face.
“It is not difficult to understand. You look on these pocket boroughs
as a flagrant abuse, and yet you are willing to profit by that abuse.
It is just the old story over again. You are willing to do evil that
good may come, Eustace. I do not think that good ever does come when
men have stooped to employ unworthy means. Take care you do not ruin
your own cause by making that mistake all through.”
Yes, it was the same girl he had left--the same Bride--the mystic, the
impracticable woman of dreams and theories. Beautiful ideals are so
plausible till you come to try and apply them to the sordid realities
of life--and then how untenable they become! But how was she to know
that, living in this old-world spot and in a dreamland of her own? So
he stifled his irritation and answered very patiently--
“You hardly understand, Bride. Your father will have to nominate a
member at this election, though probably for the last time. The abuse
is yet unredressed, and cannot be redressed till honest men who love
their country combine to blot it out. I wish to have the honour and
privilege of being among that number; and I am your father’s next of
kin, and the man it would be most natural for him to appoint. It lies
here; he must either give it to a man who would fight against the good
cause, though he would accept the seat without a qualm, or it must go
to one like myself, who, recognising the thing as a manifest outrage
upon constitutional representation, yet for this last time would take
advantage of a pernicious system in order to hurl it down for ever
more. I hold that mine is the right position to hold. If I were to
stand aside for a man who would take the seat and strive to hold back
the cause of reform, I should be a traitor to the cause and to my
country. I ought not to stand idly by without striving to win it for
myself.”
She made no reply; but her silence was not the silence of assent, and
he knew it. He took one or two turns upon the terrace and then said--
“Why do you always try to take the heart out of me, Bride? I never
speak with you, but it is always the same old story. You look like
one of God’s angels from heaven; you talk like a veritable saint upon
earth; and yet you stand there as it were opposed to every effort to
raise and bless and benefit humanity--a champion for what is tyrannous
and oppressive and hateful!”
It was not often that Eustace was carried away by his ardour in this
fashion; but the excitement through which he had recently been passing
had somewhat shaken and unnerved him. Bride looked away from him and
out over the sea with one of those intense gazes of hers which calmed
him better than any words could have done. He came up and took her
hand, which she did not withdraw from his clasp.
“Forgive me,” he said; “I spoke like a brute. I did not know what I was
saying. But, O Bride! why will not you and such as you help us? Why
will you stand aloof with pitying scorn when the world and humanity are
crying aloud for your sympathy and help?”
“Not scorn,” answered Bride gently, “not scorn; but pity--yes. I often
do feel pity for you, Eustace, because I know that you will be so
bitterly disappointed. You want to make men better and happier and
more prosperous; and more prosperous you may make them by improved
legislation. Many will be content when that is done, but you will
not. Your aim goes higher. You want to see them raised out of their
degradation--to see them ennobled and made truly better. And you will
be so bitterly disappointed! I know you will; and I pity you often
from the bottom of my heart; but indeed I do not scorn you. I know
you--and--love you far too much for that.”
She spoke with quiet fearlessness, and used the word in an impersonal
sense that Eustace could not misunderstand. He bent forward and lifted
the hand he held to his lips, and she did not shrink away, for it was
not the action of a lover, and she felt it and was not afraid. Nor was
the salute in itself altogether obsolete in those days, though growing
rarer and rarer.
“You shall teach me the knowledge in which I am lacking,” he said
ardently; but she slightly shook her head.
“I am afraid not, Eustace; I am afraid the task would be too hard.
You cannot see with my eyes, nor I with yours. You think all the way
through that the end justifies the means. I hold that no lasting good
can be, or ever has been done when unworthy and time-serving means have
been employed. A man must be pure in heart before he can successfully
fight the good fight against evil.”
“You mean that I must give up hoping to sit in Parliament?” said
Eustace hotly, unable to help applying the doctrine to the matter most
near his heart.
“No, I do not mean that. I should like to see you there; but I would
rather you fought your seat like other men, and did not profit by the
very abuse you seek to overthrow.”
“Seats are only won by wading through a sink of iniquity!” said Eustace
bitterly; and Bride was silent, her face growing sternly sorrowful.
Her heart often grew heavy within her as she realised the terrible
wickedness of the great world without.
“No seat is worth that,” she said softly; but Eustace could not agree
with her.
“We must purify legislation; we must so work that a new and perfect
system rises from the ashes of the old!” he cried, his quick enthusiasm
firing at the thought. “Men can and shall be raised. We shall one day
see the dawn of a brighter and purer day. This is but the hour of
darkness which precedes the dawn. The brightness of the day will atone
for all. You will live to see a new world yet, Bride!”
A sudden light sprang into her eyes. For a moment her face was
transfigured; but as she looked at him that light died out. She
realised how widely apart were their ideas of a new world.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]