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.”