CHAPTER VI
THE GOSPEL OF DISCONTENT
SAUL TRESITHNY was in a restless and disturbed frame of mind just now. He did not himself know what was creeping over him, but he had been for some time now experiencing a change of feeling,—a sense of weariness and disgust with his daily toil, with the people about him, with the world in general, that he had never felt before, and which perplexed him not a little.
A few weeks earlier, when this state had first assailed him, he believed it to be the outcome of his growing affection for Genefer, the farmer’s daughter, and thought, if he could but assure himself that his affection was returned, he should be himself once more; but in this conjecture he had not proved right. Genefer had admitted her preference for him; they held stolen interviews at all manner of times in and about the farm; she took care that his material comforts were greater than they had ever been before, and he could (if he chose) look forward to settling in life at no very distant date with a wife and home of his own. And yet he was not happy—he was more restless and discontented than ever in his life before.
Was it the monotony of farm labour that was the cause of this? Of course Saul and those about him had long known that he could do much better for himself if he wished. His grandfather had always told him that there was a home open to him in his comfortable cottage if he ever chose to avail himself of it, and that a wife of his would be warmly welcomed to make the home bright and cheerful for them both. He knew that the Duke would at any time give him employment in his stables, for Saul had a knack with horses that was well known all through the neighbourhood, and often caused him to be summoned to look at some refractory animal, and assist in the task of breaking him. Mr. St. Aubyn had more than once offered him the post of “odd man” at the rectory, where his one servant kept the flower garden and looked after the one stout cob which the Rector rode on his parish rounds, and had a comfortable little cottage at the gates for his home. But for some unexplained reason Saul had always declined these chances of bettering himself, and remained obstinately at his ill-paid farm work, greatly to the satisfaction of the farmer, who had never had so good an all-round man before, and who always treated Saul with consideration and affability, recognising qualities in him that he would have been loth to part with.
But perhaps no man of latent talent and energy is really content long together in a life that gives no scope for the exercise of his higher powers. Possibly it was merely this sense of constraint and uselessness which was at the bottom of Saul’s inexplicable and little understood depression. However that maybe, he had certainly taken to a mood of sullen brooding, which could hardly be dignified by the name of thought. He avoided his grandfather’s cottage on Sunday, preferring to work off his oppression by taking long walks across the cliffs; often finding himself in the little town of Pentreath before he was ready for a halt; and it was in this place that he first began to know and hear something of the questions of the day that were stirring in the great world around his humble home.
Newspapers never found their way to St. Bride’s, save to the castle; but Saul had formed the acquaintance of a cobbler in Pentreath, who was an ardent politician in his own way, and, with the natural and unexplained bias of his class, was a red-hot Radical to boot, and loved nothing so well as to inveigh with untrained and perfervid eloquence against the evils of the day—the oppression and misery of the poor, the tyranny and licentiousness, the cruelty and selfishness, of the rich. He prognosticated a day when there should be a general upheaval and turning of the tables, when every man should have his “rights,” and the tyrants of the earth should quake and tremble before their outraged slaves, as had been the case in France but a generation ago—the fearful story of which was well known to him, and over which he gloated with eager delight, even in its most ghastly details.
With this man we have no concern in these pages. He was one of that class of demagogues and agitators which was arising in England, and has flourished there to a greater or less extent ever since. Hundreds and thousands of these men were too obscure and too ignorant ever to make a name in the world, but they acted on the ignorant people about them as the leaven in the pan, and did much to bring about the state of general discontent and revolt which preceded the era of reform.
All through the month of January, when Saul would not spend his Sundays at the farm, on account of the visits of young Farmer Hewett, who was his especial aversion, he walked over to Pentreath and passed several hours with the cobbler, whose acquaintance he had made some time previously. At first the man’s talk had small interest for him, but he had a natural thirst for information; and great enthusiasm is like to kindle sparks in the minds of others, even when at first there seems small sympathy between them. Almost in spite of himself, Saul began to feel interested in the monologues and diatribes of the bright-eyed little artisan, and whether or no he agreed in his conclusions, he did come to have some notion of the state of the country at this time, the abuses which reigned there in many quarters, and the general sense amongst the people that something had got to be done to remedy this state of affairs—or they would know the reason why!
Thus it came about that when Saul first came into contact with Eustace Marchmont, he was not in that state of blank ignorance which was the usual attribute of the rustic of those parts, but had been instructed, although in a one-sided and imperfect way, upon the grievances of his class, and had, at least, been aroused to a sense that the world was all wrong, whether or not he was to have a hand in the setting of it to rights.
Eustace had seen Saul once or twice before he attempted to speak with him. His fine presence always attracted attention, and in his case the strong likeness to Abner gave him another mark of interest for those who knew the elder man. Eustace would have tried to get speech with him before, being impressed by the intelligence and character of the face, but had been somewhat deterred from the fact that he heard Abner had had the bringing up of the boy, and if so, he felt he might not find there the sort of soil he wanted. He liked a talk with the gardener at any time he could get him to engage in conversation, but the two never agreed in their conclusions. Both fully admitted the evils of the day and the need for reformation, but how that reformation was to be effected they never could agree; and although they parted friends, and had a warm esteem one for the other, Eustace secretly wished that Tresithny either knew a little more or a little less, and that his uncle did not possess a servant of such strong and peculiar views, and with so much influence in the place.
If Saul should prove to be a disciple of his grandfather’s, Eustace felt that it would be time wasted to seek to win him to his own view of the situation; whilst, on the other hand, if he could gain the young man as a convert to the new gospel, such a recruit would be a great power in his hand; for no one could look into Saul’s dark handsome face, and note the development of brow and head, without being certain that he possessed intelligence beyond the wont of his fellows, and force of character, which went farther in such a cause than keenness of wits.
But though Eustace often tried to get speech with the young man in a casual and incidental way, he never succeeded in doing so. He went to the farm from time to time and made himself pleasant to the farmer and his family. He walked about the place, and chatted as occasion served with the broad-faced, soft-spoken labourers, who grinned at any small sally he might make, and looked bland, though deferential, if he spoke of matters beyond their ken, as he had a way of doing tentatively, although with an object in view. He began to be talked of as a man with something in his head that was quite unfathomable. All agreed that he was an affable young gentleman, and well-spoken and friendly; but the rustics were shy of him nevertheless, and his chief friends were made amongst the bold and lawless fisher and smuggling folks down in the cluster of hovels beneath the shelter of the cliff. They were more or less at war with the law as it was—at least with the excise laws, which were the only ones about which they knew or cared a halfpenny; and it was easy to convince them that there was something rotten in the present system of administering the law generally, and that the people must combine to insist on a reformation. But even whilst winning grunts and snorts of approval from these rough fellows, Eustace felt that his mind and theirs were really poles asunder, and that the lawlessness they looked upon as the embodiment of welfare and happiness was an altogether different thing from that beautiful justice, law, and order which he strove to believe was to come into the world when his doctrines had leavened and fermented and taken shape. Sometimes he was almost disheartened with his want of success, wondering whether this doctrine of discontent were a wise one to instil into the minds of these wild, fierce fisher-folk. Some of the conclusions they drew from his teaching startled him not a little, as when one of them remarked that, since the great folks were so tyrannical and wicked and selfish, it would be no more that right and a just judgment to lure them to their death by false lights some stormy night, that their goods might fall a prey to the suffering poor; and this savage suggestion was hailed with such enthusiasm that Eustace was sternly horrified, and spoke with terse eloquence against any such wickedness, only to find, as other teachers and orators have found before him, that though it was easy to convince men of the truth of a doctrine towards which they were predisposed, it was altogether another matter to hinder them from deductions altogether false, and foreign to the matter in hand, when these also were to their liking; and that they were far less patient in listening to words that opposed these deductions than they had been to those which suggested them.
It was after some such experiences as these that Eustace had left the fishermen and striven to win the friendship of the rustics, but had been met by the placid stolidity and uncomprehending ignorance which seemed to form almost as absolute a barrier between them as the lack of reason and speech in brute beasts. Indeed, they and their sheep and oxen seemed to understand each other better than he and the labouring men upon the land. It was discouraging and uphill work from first to last; and the one man whom he really desired to gain, and felt certain possessed the stamp of mind and the intelligence he longed to meet, avoided him with a persistence which led him to the conclusion at last that Tresithny had warned his grandson to have no dealings with the gentleman from the castle.
But accident led at last to a meeting, and from that meeting dated the train of circumstances which led to a strange but lasting friendship between the two men whose walks in life lay so widely apart.
Eustace was out upon the downs riding a mettlesome young horse from the Duke’s stable. He was a fearless horseman, but not an experienced one. During the years he had spent in travel and in Germany, horse exercise had not come much in his way, save as a means of locomotion, and then the animals ridden had not been of a fiery kind. He had a firm seat and a steady hand, but he was by no means familiar with the tricks of a flighty young mare, when the spring of the year sets the hot blood of all young things stirring joyously in their veins, and incites them to all sorts of vagaries and extravagant gambols. Eustace was possessed with the master-mind that must always gain the upper hand of any creature under his control; and perhaps he was a thought too stern in his desire after discipline; for in lieu of indulging the wild spirits of his steed with a healthy gallop over the short elastic turf, which might soon have reduced her to quietness and submission, he held her with a strong firm hand, resolved that he and he alone would decide the time when her limbs should be allowed to stretch themselves as they longed to do;—with the effect that the beautiful, high-spirited creature, fretted beyond the limits of endurance, commenced to buck-jump with such alarming persistence and velocity, that Eustace was at last unseated, and measured his length ignominiously upon the short turf, whilst his horse, tossing her dainty head with a gesture of visible triumph, set off at a mad gallop straight across the green down, which she hardly seemed to touch with her feet.
Eustace was not hurt. He had kicked his feet free of the stirrups before he slipped off, and the ground was soft. The mare had avoided touching him with her feet as she sped off, and, save for the humiliation of the fall, and the fear lest the horse should be hurt, Eustace cared little for the accident. He could no longer see the flying steed. The ridge of swelling down hid her from him; but he picked himself up and wondered what he should do next, and whether the creature would find her way home or should be pursued, for she had not headed for her stable, but had gone tearing away over the green turf in a diagonal direction. Brushing the traces of his accident from his clothes, Eustace slowly mounted the low ridge, and then to his relief saw a horseman cantering towards him up the opposite side. A second glance told him that the horseman was none other than Saul Tresithny, and that he was mounted upon the runaway mare, whom he had evidently captured before she had had time to do herself a mischief.
Two minutes later Saul had come to a standstill beside him, and was on his own feet in a twinkling.
“I hope you are not hurt, sir,” he said shortly.
“Not at all, thank you—only humiliated. I did not mean to let her have her own way, but she took it in spite of me. How did you manage to catch her? And how come you to be so good a rider? You manage her far better than I do.”
“I broke her in, you see, sir,” answered Saul, who was stroking the glossy foam-flecked neck of the beautiful creature, whilst she dropped her nose into his palm, and was evincing every sign of satisfaction in the meeting. “His Grace bought her from Farmer Teazel. She was bred on these downs, and I had the breaking of her. She’ll make a capital hunter one of these days; but it’s not every rider she’ll let mount her, nor yet keep mounted when once they’ve been on her back. She’ll give you some trouble, I expect, sir, the next time you try to ride her. But Lady Bride can guide her with a silken thread. She took to her ladyship from the first moment she mounted her.”
“And she seems to take to you too. I think your name is Tresithny, isn’t it? You are grandson to the gardener at the castle?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Saul, and said no more, holding the stirrup for Eustace to mount, but without anything the least servile or obsequious in his attitude. The young man noted also in his speech the absence of the vernacular peculiarities that characterised all the ordinary rustics of the place. Saul’s voice was soft, and his speech had an intonation that bespoke him a native of these parts, but that was all. Just as it was with the grandfather, so it was with the grandson: they could put off the dialect when they chose, and use it when they chose. Abner had early taught his young charge the same purity of diction as he had acquired himself, and in speaking to his superiors Saul adopted it naturally.
“I don’t think I’ll ride again just yet, thanks,” said Eustace, with his frank and pleasant smile. “If you don’t object, I’ll walk your way, Tresithny. I’ve often wanted to talk with you, but I’ve never had the opportunity before.”
Saul’s face was not responsive; but he was too well trained to refuse to lead the horse for the gentleman when asked, and after all it was not so very far back to his work, where he must of necessity shake off this undesirable companion.
“I want to speak to you, Tresithny, about the cause which (in addition to the death of the Duchess) brought me just now into these parts. You know of course that, in the natural order of things, I shall one day be master here. It is not a position I covet. I hold that there is great injustice in making one man ruler and owner of half a county perhaps, and of huge revenues, holding vast powers in his hand whether he be capable or not of ruling wisely and well—simply from an accident of birth, whilst hundreds and thousands of his fellow-men are plunged in untold misery, and vice that is the outcome of that undeserved misery. I believe myself that the whole system of the country is rotten and corrupt, and that the day has come when a new and better era will dawn upon the world. But meantime, in the present, I have to look forward to succeeding his Grace, and I am naturally very greatly interested in the people of this place, and intensely anxious to see them elevated and ennobled.”
Saul suddenly looked at the young man as he had never looked at him before, and said between his teeth—
“That’s a strange thing for you to say, sir.”
“Why strange?” asked Eustace, half guessing the answer,
“Because, sir, if once the people begin to think for themselves, to see for themselves, and to understand the meaning of things around them, they soon won’t stand what they see—won’t stand that one set of men in the country should have everything, and roll in wealth and wallow in luxury, whilst they can’t get bread to put in their children’s mouths. They’ll think it’s time their turn came—as they did in France, I’ve heard, not so very long ago, and that’ll be a bad day for you and for all those like you.”
“Yes,” answered Eustace, with emphasis, “such a bad day for us, and (if that form of revolution were repeated) such a bad day for England too—ay, and for you, Tresithny, and your class—that we men who recognise and deplore the injustice and tyranny of the present system are resolved to try and prevent it by making the people’s cause ours, and ridding them of their grievous wrongs before they shall have been goaded to madness and rise in ignorant savagery, and become butchers and not reformers. The French Revolution turned France into a veritable hell upon earth. What we are striving to accomplish is to bring a day of peace and plenty, and justice and happiness upon England, without the shedding of one drop of blood, without any but gentle measures, and the increase of confidence and goodwill between class and class.”
“And do you think you are going to do it?” asked Saul, with a grim look about his mouth, which Eustace did not altogether understand.
“I think so—I trust so. Earnest and devoted men of every class are banded together with that object. But, Tresithny, we want the help of the people. We want the help of such as you. What is the use of our striving to give their rights to the people if they remain in stolid apathy and do not ask for them? We must awaken and arouse them; we must teach them discontent with their present state of misery and ignorance, and then open the way for them to escape from it. Do you understand at all what I mean? We must awaken and arouse them. They are—in this part of the world, at least—like men sleeping an unnatural drugged sleep. The poison of ignorance and apathy is like opium in its effects upon their spirits. We must awaken and arouse them before there is hope for cure. Tresithny, we want men of intelligence like you to help in this work. You know their ways and their thoughts. You can appeal to their slumbering senses far better than we can do. We want to interest those who live with them and amongst them, and whose language they understand as they cannot understand ours. There is a great work to be accomplished by such as you, Tresithny, if you will but join the good cause.”
Saul was roused by a style of talk for which much of his recent brooding had prepared the way, and made a reply which showed Eustace that here at least there was no impassable barrier of ignorance or apathy to be overcome. In ten minutes’ time the men were in earnest talk, Eustace giving his companion a masterly summary of the state of parties and the feeling of the day (vastly different from anything he had heard before, and before which his mental horizon seemed to widen momentarily), and he joining in with question and retort so apt and pointed, that Eustace was more and more delighted with his recruit, and felt that to gain such a man as Saul Tresithny to his side would be half the battle in St. Bride’s.
But even here he could not achieve quite the success he coveted. He could implant the gospel of discontent easily enough—the soil was just of the kind in which the plant would take ready root; but with that other side of the doctrine—that endeavour to make men distinguish between the abuses, and the men who had hitherto appeared to profit by them—ay, there was the rub!
“You speak, sir, sometimes of doing all this without making the people hate their tyrants and their oppressors; but that isn’t human nature. If they’ve a battle to fight against those that hold the power now, and if they are stirred up to fight it, they will hate them with a deadly hatred; and even when the victory is ours, as you say it will and must be one day, the hatred will go on and on. It’s in our blood, and it’ll be there till the world’s end. We may forget it whilst we’re sleeping; but once you and the like of you wake us up, it won’t sleep again in a hurry; no, and it shall not either!” And the young man raised his arm and shook his fist in the air with a wild gesture, as though hurling defiance at the whole world.
“Ah! Tresithny, that is a natural feeling at the outset; and although we regret it, we cannot wonder at it, nor try to put it down with too strong a hand. But it is not the right feeling—and the right one will prevail at last, as I fully hope and trust. When we are boys at school and under restraint, against which we kick and fret, we look upon our masters as natural enemies; yet as we grow to manhood and meet them again, they become valued friends, and we laugh together over former animosities. And so it will be when the great work of reform is carried out in the generous spirit that we strive to instil; and you amongst others will be the first to hold out the hand of fellowship to all men, when wrongs have been righted, and society has come forth purified and ennobled by the struggle.”
“Never!” cried Saul, with a look of such concentrated hatred that Eustace was startled. “You may talk till you are black in the face, sir, but you’ll never talk out the hatred that is inborn between class and class. I know what that is. I am a man of the people, and for the rights of the people I am ready to live and to die. But I HATE THE RACE OF TYRANTS AND OPPRESSORS. I hate, and shall always hate and loathe them. Do not talk to me of goodwill and friendship. I will have none of it. I would set up a gallows over yonder, if I had my way, and hang every noble of the land upon it—as the French set up their guillotine, and set the heads of the king and queen and nobles of the land rolling from it!”
This was not by any means the spirit Eustace had desired to kindle in his disciple; but, after all, might not such sentiments be but the natural ebullition of enthusiasm in one who was young, untrained, and ardent? Certainly it was preferable in his eyes to apathy, and he was not disposed to strain the relations newly set up between them by opposing such sanguinary statements.
“The wrongs of humanity do indeed set up a strong sense of righteous indignation,” he said quietly; “but, believe me, the fierce and sanguinary revolutions of history have not had half the lasting effects of the bloodless ones accomplished by nations within themselves, by the accord of all classes concerned. That is what we are now bent upon striving to accomplish. We want your help, Tresithny, but not all the bloodthirsty eagerness you are disposed to give us. You must temper your zeal with discretion. Have you any personal cause to hate the so-called upper classes as you do?”
The young man’s face was so dark and stern that Eustace almost repented of his question.
“Have I?—have I? Have I not, indeed! The upper classes! Ay, indeed, they are well called! Oh, can I but help to hurl them down to the dust, my life will not have been lived for nothing!”
Eustace looked earnestly at him.
“Can you not tell me what you mean, Tresithny? Believe me, I would be your friend, if you would permit it. I have seen no one since I came here in whom I take so warm an interest.”
There was this about Eustace that always made him popular wherever he went, and that was his perfect sincerity. When he spoke words like these, it was obvious that he meant them, and those whom he addressed felt this by instinct. Saul did so, and the fierce darkness died out of his face. He turned and looked into Eustace’s eyes, and Eustace returned the glance steadily, holding out his hand as he did so.
“I mean what I say, Tresithny,” he said, with a smile. “If you will have me for a friend, I will be worthy of your confidence.”
And then Saul, by a sudden impulse, put his hand into that of the Duke of Penarvon’s heir, and the compact was sealed.
“I will tell you my story, or rather my mother’s story,” he said, after a few moments of silence, “and then perhaps you will understand what I have said. It is common enough—too common, perhaps, to interest you; but to me it can never become common. My grandfather was gardener to the Duke. He had a loving wife, and one daughter, whom they both loved as the apple of their eye. When she was old enough to do something for herself, she was taken into the castle and rose to be second maid to her Grace, who was always very kind to her attendants, and took pains that the girl should be taught many things that would be of value to her as she grew up in life. There was plenty of fine company at the castle then: it was before Lady Bride was born, and her Grace’s health gave way. Of course I cannot tell what went on; but a day came when my mother disappeared from St. Bride, and none knew where she had gone. It killed her mother, for there was no manner of doubt but that she had been persuaded to go with or after one of the fine gentlemen who had been visiting there.”
“Or one of their servants,” suggested Eustace, very quietly.
For a moment Saul paused, as though such an idea had never entered his head before, as indeed it never had done. He had heard very little of his young mother’s mournful tale, but he had always believed that she left her parents for the protection of one of the Duke’s fine popinjay friends.
“I don’t know,” he answered sullenly, “but they all said it was a certain gentleman. She broke her father’s heart, and killed her mother, and came back at the end of a year to die herself. She could never tell her story—or would not—whether or not she had been betrayed. That we shall never know; but she left me behind her to my grandfather’s care, and I have grown up knowing all. I never would enter the castle as servant. I never would, and I never will. I will carry my enmity to your class, sir, to my life’s end, and I will fight against it with might and main, and with all the powers that I have. I have taken your hand in friendship, because I see you mean well by us, and because I cannot help it; but I will never do so a second time. I will not make a second friend of one above me in rank. I will keep the right to fight against them and to hate—hate—HATE them—and not all your honeyed pleadings can change that. Now I have told you all, and you can choose whether you will have me or not; for it will be war to the death when I fight, and you may as well know it first as last!”
Eustace smiled at the vehemence of his disciple as he said quietly—
“We will have you, Saul, hatred and all. You are too useful a tool to be spared because your edge is over sharp.”
And thus the compact was sealed between them.