_STIRRING DAYS_
Sir Roland Menteith was slightly known to Eustace, who had spent much
time in the lobbies of the House of Commons, and was personally known
to the majority of its members, by sight if not by name. He was a
fine-looking man of some five-and-thirty summers, and although a Tory
by descent and tradition, was by no means an enemy of such moderate
measures of parliamentary reform as were at present under discussion.
He had voted for the reading of the recent bill, and was by no means
prepared to pledge himself to his constituency as its enemy. There
were many amongst his enemies who said he had no right, with the views
he held, to call himself a Tory; but he would defend himself by the
argument that Tories would soon cease to exist if they never moved one
step forward with the times they lived in. A system originally sound
and good could well become corrupt and bad under a changed condition
of affairs, and if Tories were pledged to resist any sort of change,
bad or good--well, they at once placed themselves in a false position,
and made their own extinction only a matter of time. He maintained
that the true Tory aimed always for the best and soundest policy, the
policy that would make England respected abroad and prosperous at
home. Tearing down and splitting up were actions bad and degrading
to a government, but gradual change, especially of a constructive
character, was essential to the development of the national life. So
he argued, and Eustace cordially agreed, whilst the old Duke listened
with his slight peculiar smile, and said little, but kept true to the
point in the little he did say. Sir Roland had come over to the castle
in great excitement only one day following the arrival of Eustace
there, and he had easily been persuaded to remain on as a guest whilst
these important and stirring themes were under discussion. He was very
well pleased to find in young Marchmont so moderate and temperate a
reformer. Eustace had certainly learnt more moderation of thought
during the past year, and was more cautious both in what he advocated
and what he approved. He had had several experiences of a kind likely
to awaken in him some distrust of the methods which once had seemed
entirely right and praiseworthy; and he began to have an inkling that
there was something wanting in his system before it could be called in
any way perfect. The passions of the people could easily be stirred;
but there was no power he knew of as yet strong enough to hold them
in a just and proper repression. It was a hateful thing to him to be
accused (as he knew he was in many quarters) of being one of those
demagogues bent on rousing all that was worst and most cruel and wild
in the natures over which he acquired influence. Sir Roland, after one
of his many morning rides into Pentreath, told him flatly that he had
the credit of being at the bottom of those riots which had caused such
loss and destruction of property there in the autumn, and it was soon
ascertained that the feeling there was so strongly against him that it
would be hopeless for him to stand as a candidate on either one side or
the other.
This piece of intelligence came as rather a severe shock to him. After
the interview with the Duke on the day of his arrival, he had thought
more and more of the suggestion that he should contest the seat at
Pentreath, sparing Sir Roland the cost and the worry. His own income
was large, and could well stand the strain, and the Duke was a man of
known wealth and liberality. Eustace, too, was indulging in halcyon
dreams of contesting the seat with rigid purity of method, hoping even
to shame his adversary into better ways by his own absolute probity.
Sir Roland, although fond of his constituents, and rather fond of the
excitement and bustle of an election and the sound of his own clever
speeches on the hustings, was by no means averse to be spared the
trouble and expense for once, stepping quietly into the Duke’s pocket
borough, and throwing in his influence for young Marchmont, with whom
upon the essential matter of the coming strife he agreed. Eustace was
feeling something of the keen exhilaration of the coming strife, and
was enjoying the release from the anomalous position he would have
occupied (at least in the eyes of Bride) as his kinsman’s nominee, when
this fresh blow was dealt to his pride and his hopes. Sir Roland had
heard enough to be very certain that the very name of Eustace Marchmont
would arouse an uproar of fury amongst the class who had the voting
power; also, there could be no manner of doubt that his appearance
as a candidate would provoke fresh riots of a very serious nature.
Investigation of these rumours only confirmed them. Eustace Marchmont’s
name had been on the lips of all the rioters who made havoc of the town
during the recent outbreak. Their young leader, Saul Tresithny, had
quoted him as his authority for almost every wild argument by which
he had stirred the people to madness, and roused them to any act of
violence, in order to overthrow, or at least be revenged upon, their
tyrants and foes. If he were to appear on the hustings, he would be
at once the idol of the lawless (and voteless) mob; but the object of
reprobation, if not of execration, to all the sober-minded citizens,
whatever might be their political views. Had Eustace come amongst them
as a stranger with the Penarvon and Menteith interest at his back, he
might have carried all before him, for there was no popular man in
the place likely to oppose him under those conditions; but branded as
he now was by the names of Radical and revolutionary, all men looked
askance at him, and it was with a keen sense of disappointment, not
to say humiliation, that he had to abandon the idea of contesting
the seat, and revert to his original plan of accepting his kinsman’s
nomination.
“I suppose you think that my sin has found me out,” he said rather
bitterly to Bride, when this unpalatable news had become verified as
actual fact. “I suppose you believe that I went about the country last
year inciting men to arson and pillage and every sort of brutality. You
know that is what is said of me by the respectable people of Pentreath,
that I provoked and incited riot, and took very good care to be out of
the way when it took place, that others might bear the punishment.”
“It is cruel to say such things of you,” answered Bride, with a quiet
indignation which was very grateful to him. “I know they are not true,
and I almost think the people who say them know that there is only a
very small substratum of truth in them. But, Eustace,” and she looked
up at him with one of her rare smiles, “do you not think you sometimes
say things almost as untrue on the other side? Do you not sometimes
make out men in high places to be little else than monsters, when all
the time they are almost as helpless, and perhaps even less to blame
for the effects of a system, than you for those riots at Pentreath,
which above all things you disapprove and deprecate?”
“I know what you mean,” he said; “I think we all go too far in our
attack and defence. But those men _do_ uphold a system of tyranny and
iniquity, even if they are not responsible for it, whilst I never
uphold violence and lawlessness. I hate and abominate it with my whole
heart.”
“I know you do; but you will not get ignorant men to believe it, when
you teach them how bad the laws are. Their idea of mending the existing
state of things is to rebel against it by force.”
“Yes; and great present mischief is the result; but, Bride, if all
men held your doctrine of patience and submission, no reformation or
reform, no redress of abuses, no respite from tyranny and oppression,
would ever have been effected in the world’s history. When you have
such imperfect material to deal with, imperfections are everywhere.
Good is always mixed with evil, and will be to the end of the chapter.”
“Yes; until the Kingdom,” answered Bride sadly, yet with a sudden
lighting of the eyes. “Yes, Eustace, I know that so long as human
nature is what it is, nothing can be done without evil creeping in.
But I still think that if men would be content to leave results, and
simply strive themselves after the best and highest good, and try
and teach the ignorant and the degraded the one true and only way of
raising themselves--if men would look to God for His teaching--from the
highest to the lowest--trying in all things to do not their will but
His--then I think the world would gradually raise itself without these
cruel scenes of strife and bloodshed, without these heart-burnings and
miserable factions. ‘Thy kingdom come!’ It is a prayer always on our
lips; but do men try to apply the laws of God’s kingdom to this earth
which He has made and they have marred?”
“I think that is about the last thing men of the present day think
of,” answered Eustace, with a curious sidelong look at the earnest
face beside him. “They want something more practical to go by. When it
comes to be a question what God wills, every divine and every school of
theology and philosophy has a different answer to give. Such an appeal
as that would only make confusion worse confounded.”
A very wistful, sorrowful look crept into the fair young face.
“I was not thinking of schools of theology or philosophy,” she answered
very quietly, “I was thinking of God Himself as revealed in His
Incarnate Son; but I do not think we understand each other when we
speak of that, Eustace.”
In very truth he did not understand her. Did she seriously believe that
the affairs of the world could be directed by a Divine voice straight
from heaven? It almost appeared sometimes as though she did, and yet
in most matters Lady Bride, mystic and dreamer though she was, was not
lacking in quiet common-sense and a fair amount of experience of such
life as she had seen.
For a moment he stood silent beside her--they were on the terrace,
looking down at the sparkling sea below. Then he roused himself, and
changed the subject suddenly.
“Shall we go down to the shore and see Saul Tresithny? I have not
succeeded in catching him yet. I do not think he tries to avoid me.
Your gardener says he is much attached to me; but he has always been
out with the boats. There seems plenty of fishing just now. I hope the
poor fellow is not suffering from lack of employment.”
“I think not. There is always plenty of work with the boats in the
summer months. It is the winter that is so hard for our people, except
when they take to smuggling, as too many do. I am afraid that is what
Saul will do when fishing gets slack. He always had a leaning towards
any sort of adventure and danger. Abner managed to keep him away from
the fishing-village as a lad, and when he went to the farm he had
other work, and was too far off; but I am afraid how it will be with
him now. I had hoped he would go to Mr. St. Aubyn and take care of
his garden and horse, but he will not. Nobody can do anything with
him--poor Saul!”
“I will see what I can do,” said Eustace, with hopeful confidence.
“He is too good to turn into a mere fisherman and smuggler. There are
traits of great promise in him. I suppose birth and blood _does_ tell,
and there is reason to believe that his father was a man of birth, I
hear, although he may have been a villain. Certainly the man is very
different from his fellows. I wonder whether he would come to London as
my servant. I could do very well with another groom, and I know he has
a great knack with horses. He might be very useful.”
“I wish he would,” said Bride earnestly. “It might be a turning-point
in his life to get away from old associates and old ideas.”
They were by this time walking down towards the shore by the little
ridge-like path before described. Eustace was behind, and Bride in
front, so that she could not see the sudden light which leaped into his
eyes; but she heard something new in the tone of his voice as he said--
“Then you do not hold that I have been the ruin of Saul--body and soul,
as so many do? You do not think that to take him away with me would be
but to consummate that ruin?”
“No, indeed I do not,” answered Bride gently. “I think that the people
who say such things do not understand you, Eustace. I think you might
perhaps do poor Saul more good than anybody just now, because I think
he will listen to you, and he will listen to no one else. I should like
to think of him going away with you. If you cannot teach him all he
will have to learn before he can be a truly happy man, you can teach
him a great deal that he will be better for the knowing; and perhaps
some day, when the right time has come, he will be ready to be taught
the rest.”
“Then you do not call me a demagogue, an infidel--a man dangerous to
the whole community, and to the world at large?” questioned Eustace,
with the insistance of one whose heart has been deeply wounded
by accusations hurled against him--all the more deeply from the
consciousness that the censure has not been wholly undeserved.
“No,” answered Bride softly, “I do not call you any of those names--not
even in my thoughts. I know you have not been very wise; I think you
know that yourself, and will learn wisdom for the future. But I know
that you believed yourself right in what you said and did, and were
generous and disinterested in your teaching. About your faith I know
very little. I think you know very little yourself; but we can leave
that in God’s hands. It does not come by man, or through man, but
by the will of God. I think it is His will, Eustace, to draw you to
Himself one day; but that day must come in His good time. I think we
sometimes make a great mistake in striving to urge and drive those whom
we love. Waiting _is_ hard, and sometimes it seems very, very long. But
things are so different with God--His patience as well as His love are
so much greater than ours. And we can always pray--that helps the time
of waiting best.”
Eustace was intensely thrilled by these low-spoken words, which
he only just caught through the plash of the waves beneath. That
magnetic influence which Bride always exercised upon him was almost
overpoweringly strong at that moment. He could almost have fallen at
her feet in adoration. After the good-natured strictures of Sir Roland,
the slight grim reproofs of the Duke, and his knowledge of the cutting
criticisms and violent abuse levelled at him by the world of Pentreath,
these words of Bride’s fell like balm upon his spirit. He felt lifted
into a different atmosphere, and the question could not but present
itself to him--
“If faith and those unseen things in which that pure girl believes,
which are to her the greatest realities of life, are nothing but a
myth, a figment of the imagination, what gives them such power over
a nature like mine? Why do I thrill at the thought of them? Why do I
see glimpses, as through a rifted cloud, of a glory, a beauty, a peace
beyond anything I have ever conceived? Why, even by the teachings of my
own philosophy, the fact of this stirring of spirit indicates a reality
of some sort. And is there, after all, nothing higher than philosophy?
Is there no object of objective worship? Is there, after all, a God?”
Little did Bride suspect the quick stirrings of spirit her words had
evoked. She walked on, with her sweet face set in earnest lines,
thinking of Saul and his grandfather’s ceaseless prayers on his behalf,
praying herself for him in a half-unconscious fashion, as was her habit
when thoughts of the erring one presented themselves. Her mind was more
with him just at that moment than with the kinsman behind her, with
whom, however, thoughts of Saul were always more or less mixed up;
therefore the question, when it came, did not in any wise startle her.
“Bride, do you mean that you ever pray for me?”
“Yes, Eustace. I always pray for those whom I love, and for those who
seem to need my prayers.”
He was silent for several minutes, and then his thoughts surging back
to a question that had been on the tip of his tongue before, he asked,
“Bride, you said I could not teach Saul to be a truly happy man. Do you
think that I am not a happy man myself?”
“Not a truly happy one,” she answered, with quiet certainty. “I believe
you are happy in one way--in the world’s way. But that is not what
I mean by true happiness. There is another happiness I hope you will
learn some day--I think you will; and then you will understand. I do
not think you can understand yet.”
He was not sure that he could not. He remembered the Duchess in
former years; he had Bride before his eyes now. Even old Abner, in
the midst of all his trouble, showed a substratum of unchanging
serenity which nothing seemed able to shake. He believed he apprehended
without understanding what manner of thing this happiness was--a
thing altogether different from and independent of the fluctuations
of enjoyment and pleasure which went by the name of happiness in his
world. Eustace was receiving impressions just now with a force and a
rapidity that was startling to him. Every day something seemed added
to his list of experiences, and not the least was the peculiar wave of
emotion that swept over him now.
Yet Bride noticed nothing different in his manner as they reached the
beach, and were able to walk on side by side. He was a little absent
and thoughtful perhaps, as was natural with the interview just hanging
over him; and it soon appeared that their journey was not in vain, for
the tall form of Saul was seen seated upon a rock not far away, and
Bride said softly to Eustace, “There he is. I think you had better go
to him alone. I will go and see some of the poor people and join you
later on.”
Eustace was grateful to her for this suggestion. Now that he was almost
face to face with his quondam pupil, he felt that he would rather
be alone. He did not know in what mood Saul would meet him, and it
was better perhaps that they should be without the fetter which the
presence of Bride must necessarily impose.
Without pausing to rehearse any speech, Eustace walked straight up to
the lonely figure on the rock, and holding out his hand in greeting (a
demonstration very rare in those days between men of such different
stations), said, with warm feeling, “Tresithny, you have suffered in
what you took to be the cause of the people. That must make a fresh
bond between us, whatever else we may have to say upon the subject.”
Saul started at the sound of the familiar, unexpected voice (the plash
of the waves had drowned approaching footsteps); he started again
at sight of the outstretched hand; but after a moment of visible
hesitation, he took it in his grasp and wrung it till Eustace could
have winced. The sombre face was working strangely. The mask of stolid
indifference and contempt had fallen from it. There was a new light in
the hollow eyes as they met the searching gaze of Eustace’s, and the
first words came out with something of a gasp.
“Then you have come at last, sir, and you have not changed!”
“Why should I change?” asked Eustace, with a smile, wonderfully
relieved to find that this unapproachable man, who was puzzling all
the world besides, did not turn a deaf ear upon him. Shocked as he was
at the change he saw in the outward aspect of Saul, he saw that it was
the same Saul as of old, a man full of strength and fight--a tool that
might be dangerous to work with, or of inestimable value, according
as it could be guided and tempered. A sense of true admiration and
fellowship sprang up within him towards this stern-faced son of toil,
with his sorrowful story and suffering face.
“Why should I change?” he asked; and then Saul’s pent-up feeling burst
out.
Every one had changed--the whole world--the very cause itself. All had
left him in his hour of need--all had turned upon him and betrayed
and deserted him. Months of solitary brooding, the delirium of fever,
the overwrought nervous condition into which imprisonment had driven
him, had all combined to produce in Saul a distorted image of life, of
the world, and of every single being in it. Hitherto he had locked
these feelings in his own heart; but now, before Eustace, the one man
who had proffered him friendship in the midst of his trouble, the
friendship of comrade to comrade, man to man, it all came pouring out
in one great flood of impassioned eloquence and imprecation, terrible
sometimes to listen to. It was not easy at times even to follow his
rapid speech, which alternated between the roughest vernacular and the
purest English he had ever spoken, rehearsed a hundred times in his
prison-house, as he had prepared the speeches which were to raise all
Devon and Cornwall to arms, if need be, against the monstrous class
tyranny under which the country lay groaning. Eustace let him have his
fling, never stopping him by argument or opposition, leading him on by
a sympathetic word now and again to outpour everything that was in his
heart without fear. He knew by instinct what the relief would be, how
much good it would do for the outlet to be found at length; and though
unable to repress a sense of shuddering loathing at some of the words
of his companion, he could well excuse them in the thought of his great
sufferings and state of mental distraction, and was very hopeful by
slow degrees of winning him back to a better and more reasonable frame
of mind.
It was much to have gained his confidence--much that Saul was able to
depend on the sympathy of his former master, and was not afraid of
baring his inmost soul before him. Eustace was seized sometimes with
a sense of something like dismay to find how absolutely Saul believed
he would echo even the most blasphemous of his thoughts, how securely
he reckoned upon finding in his leader the same absolute denial of
all revealed religion--religion which he himself fiercely decried and
ridiculed, as part and parcel of a corrupt system soon to be exploded.
Much that the young man thus hotly declaimed against--much of his wild
and random vituperation must have been learned from others. Eustace
could honestly affirm he had never allowed such expressions to pass
his lips; but here and there a phrase of his own would mingle with the
wilder words of Saul, and half startle Eustace by the method of its
application. Also he could not help recognising, as this man poured
out his soul before him by the shore that day, that his own standpoint
had very slightly and insensibly changed from those days, more than a
year back now, when he had first sought to awaken in Saul a response
to his own ardent imaginings. What the change was he could scarcely
define, but he was aware that arguments and assertions which would then
have passed by as only slight exaggerations of a legitimate truth, now
came to him with something of a shock, bringing a realisation of some
unheeded change or development in himself which had silently leavened
during the past months, till it had attained a proportion he never
suspected.
Rousing himself with a start from the train of thought thus suggested,
he tried to bring his companion back to the world of real things,
and to leave these idle denunciations and invectives alone for the
present. When Saul had about tired himself with his own impetuosity,
and had kept silence for a few moments, Eustace spoke a few well-chosen
words of sympathy, and gradually bringing round the subject of the
forthcoming election, he explained to the ex-prisoner what had been
going on in the world during his incarceration, and what bright hopes
were now entertained in this country of better days in store for it,
when a strong Government, pledged to redress the gravest of political
abuses, should be in power.
Saul was not entirely ignorant of what had passed, but had very
distorted ideas as to the amount and character of the opposition
offered to the bill and the prospects of its speedy success. He
listened eagerly to what Eustace told him, and his remarks and
questions again struck his master as showing a quickness of insight
and a power of appreciation most remarkable in one of his class. He
was a more excitable, a more sombre, a more embittered man than he had
been a year before. His class hatred had sunk deeper into his soul,
and become a more integral part of his nature. Eustace recognised how
the humiliation, if not the destruction, of the moneyed classes was to
him almost more of an object than the redress of the grievances of the
poor. The two were linked together in his mind, it was true; but it was
easy to see which of them held the foremost place. Eustace realised,
as perhaps he had never done so well before, the temper of the French
revolutionaries of forty years back. He could well picture Saul in
their midst, and think with a shudder of the deeds he would commit at
the head of a furious mob, wrought up to a pitch of ungovernable fury
by the rude eloquence of such a leader. Perhaps he realised, too, what
might come to England if her sons were stirred up to a like madness,
instead of being worked upon by gentler methods. He well knew that
there had been moments when his own country had been on the brink of
revolution, and that such moments might even come again. Surely it was
needful for the men who stood in the forefront of the van of reform
to walk warily. They had an immense power behind them; but it was, as
Abner had said, the power of an explosive whose properties and whose
energies were but imperfectly understood. Reform may be the best
hindrance to revolution, but it may also incite the very danger it
strives to avert. Eustace had been told this a hundred times before,
but he had never been so convinced of the truth of the warning as he
was whilst walking on the shore that day in the company of Saul.
He suggested taking him away from St. Bride, and showing him the other
side of life in the great centres of the world; but Saul, though
visibly attracted by the thought of continuing near to Eustace, for
whom his love and admiration were most loyal, gave no decided answer.
He shrank from the confinement even of freedom in a great city, shrank
from even such slight bondage as service under such a master as this
would entail. Moreover, there was no need for a speedy decision.
Eustace would be some weeks at the castle; he would probably remain
there till the result of the election was known. It would be time
enough to settle then what should be done. For the present, Saul would
remain unfettered and untrammelled.
“For I must be in Pentreath if there is to be an election,” he said,
the light of battle leaping into his eyes. He remembered elections in
past times, and the attendant excitement and fighting and fun, as in
those days it seemed to him. He was no politician then, and had only
the vaguest notion as to what it was all about; but he was always
foremost in the crowd about the hustings, cheering, howling, flinging
missiles, according to the spirit of the moment and the wave of public
opinion, which would ebb and rise and change a dozen different times in
as many hours. He had always been instinctively the enemy of the Tory
and the supporter of the Whig candidate, because he had always taken
on every matter the contrary opinion of the Castle--almost as a matter
of religion. Otherwise he could not be said to have had an opinion
heretofore in such things. But the excitement, the indiscriminate
treating, the rowdyism of the whole place, and the fights and
scrimmages that were constantly arising, were like the elixir of life
to the ardent temperament of one who was forced by circumstances into a
life of monotonous toil. He always obtained a few days’ holiday on such
occasions, and spent them in a fashion dear to his heart. Now he looked
forward to a longer spell of excitement, and to struggles of a very
different kind. Then it had all been fun, now it would be stern earnest
with him. There was a fierce light of battle in his eyes. The hope
sprang up again in his heart of striking a blow for the cause. Eustace
saw the look, heard the half hissed words of joy and anticipation, and
smilingly laid a hand on the young fisherman’s arm.
“Yes, I think you will do well to be there. You are one of those who
may do us good, and help on the cause of right and liberty; but not
by violence, Saul--always remember that. Violence is not our friend,
but our most deadly foe. It puts a sword in the hands of our enemies
to slay us withal. There must be no unseemly violence at the Pentreath
election--remember that. We must give our opponents no reason to say
that the cause of reform is advocated by cowardly and unworthy means.
Leave all that sort of thing to our foes. Let them get up as many
riots as they please. Our part is to be just and wise and patient,
secure in the righteousness and justice of our object. You will find
we shall come out in a far stronger position by remembering this than
if we organise disturbances and lead angry mobs to deeds of reckless
lawlessness.”
Saul made no response; Eustace was not even sure that he heard. His
eyes were flashing, his nostrils working; he clenched and unclenched
his hand in a fashion indicative of strong excitement.
Eustace judged it wiser to say no more for the present. There would
be plenty of time before the elections came off to gain an increasing
ascendency over this wild spirit. His first beginning had been by no
means bad.
Yet Eustace, as he walked homewards silently with Bride, could hardly
help smiling at the thought of the part he should be forced to play
with Saul. That there were stirring days coming upon the country he
could not doubt, and he meant to take his part in them with a will; but
he realised that, with Saul watching his every movement, and pledged
to follow him to the utmost limit to which his own arguments could be
pushed, he should be forced to weigh his words, and direct his actions
with a greater prudence end moderation than he had originally purposed.
Perhaps it might be well for him to have this reminder well before his
eyes, but he could not but smile at the peculiar result which had been
brought about by his own endeavour to work some sort of small agitation
amongst the people at St. Bride’s, St. Erme, and Penarvon.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]