DURING the latter half of the year 1830, England was passing through some searching experiences, and through a crisis of her political history. The events of these momentous years of the Reform struggle have become by this time a matter of history, but a very brief outline of passing events may not be out of place for younger readers.
When George IV. mounted the throne, the hopes of the Whig party rose high. He was held to be the champion of liberty and reform, and it was a bitter disappointment to those who had regarded him as the friend and pupil of Fox, to find him cast himself into the arms of the Tory party and turn his back on former associates. The leaven of reformed representation had taken such hold of the nation, however, that already a strong party existed, not in the country alone, but in Parliament; yet the prospects of that party were at a very low ebb, till the sudden turn brought about in the first place by the death of the king, and secondly by the “Three days of July” in Paris, when an arbitrary ministry, striving to override the Chamber of Deputies and subvert the constitution, brought about the momentous rising in Paris which cost Charles X. his throne, and raised Louis Philippe to be “King of the Barricades.”
With the accession of William IV., the hopes of the Reform party rose high. The Sailor Prince, as the people liked to call him, although he had been something of a Tory in early life, did not stand pledged to any side in politics, and might have the shrewdness to take warning by the fate of his brother of France, and deem it wise and politic to support all that was right and reasonable in the projected scheme of reform. The champions of the movement were Lord Grey, Lord Durham, his son-in-law, Lord John Russell, and Lord Brougham; but the Duke of Wellington and his cabinet were strenuously opposed to any alteration in the existing method of Parliamentary representation; and when Parliament met for the first time in the new king’s reign, in October, the premier plainly stated this opinion in his opening speech, and with his customary boldness asserted that not only would he introduce no measure of reform, but he would strenuously oppose any that should be brought before the House.
It is well for a minister to have the courage of his opinions; but from the moment of the delivery of that speech the existing ministry became highly unpopular throughout the country. All far-seeing men, of whatever shade of opinion, recognised that, whether for good or ill, the time had come when something must be done to give the large cities and the opulent middle classes a voice in the representation of their country. The rotten boroughs, however desirable from a partisan point of view, were obviously an abuse, and were doomed; the country was in a state of ferment which threatened to become dangerous, and the spirit shown by the Wellington Ministry was one which was at that juncture impossible to carry out in practical legislation. They recognised this themselves, and resigned in November, upon a very small and insignificant defeat, knowing that if they did not do so then, they would only be forced later on upon a more crucial question.
Lord Grey was intrusted by the king with the formation of the next ministry, and the winter months were spent in private discussions amongst the leaders of the Reform party as to the nature of the bill to be introduced. Its terms were kept a profound secret till the following March, when Lord John Russell announced them in a densely packed and intensely excited House of Commons. After a spirited debate the House agreed to accept the introduction of the bill for amending the representation without a division; but the second reading was carried only by a majority of one, and the Government, foreseeing that so strong a measure could never be carried through committee with such an uncertain majority, determined to appeal to the country, and on sustaining a small defeat on a resolution of General Gascoigne’s, resolved on a dissolution. The king was greatly opposed to this, but was persuaded at last to consent to it; and to the great joy of the reforming party all over the country, Parliament was dissolved, and writs for a fresh election issued.
This is anticipating matters in the course of the narrative, but it is better to give the brief abstract of the work of Lord Grey’s ministry consecutively. As for the terms of the new Reform Bill, they will be found in any history of the day, and are hardly in place in the pages of a story.
These autumn days, spent by Saul Tresithny eating out his heart in prison, but by the country at large in a state of seething excitement and unrest, and by such men as Eustace Marchmont in an eager canvassing amongst men of all shades of opinion and all sorts of positions for adherents to the new gospel of reform and emancipation, were passed by Bride very quietly in her sea-girt home, and by the Duke in much serious thought, and study of the vexed questions of the day.
He and his daughter, since that day when she made her appeal to him on behalf of Saul, had drawn slowly yet surely nearer together. The change was hardly noticeable at first, though Bride was sensible of an increased gentleness in her father’s manner. But by degrees he came to talk more to her of the things working in his mind, and she began to ask questions of him, which hitherto she had kept locked up in her own heart. Both were the better for the outlet, and began to look forward to the evening hour after dinner, when they sat together in the big drawing-room and spoke of whatever was uppermost in their minds. It was in this way that they came to speak often about the questions of the day, which subject led naturally to that of Eustace and his doings and sayings. Eustace was often a great deal in the minds both of father and daughter just then. He wrote to the Duke regularly, though not frequently, and his letters were always full of interesting information, though this information was not always palatable to the recipient, who was too old to change his attitude of mind, and whilst striving after tolerance and a spirit of justice and impartiality, regarded with something very much like dread the coming strife.
“Shall we invite Eustace to spend his Christmas with us this winter?” asked the Duke of his daughter one day towards the latter end of October.
Bride glanced at her father, and her cheek crimsoned suddenly.
“If—if—you wish it, papa,” she said, with visible hesitancy.
The old man glanced at her with a quick searching look.
“Does that mean you would not wish it yourself?”
“I—I—hardly know. I had not thought of it. Eustace was very kind to me when he was here; but——”
Again she faltered in a way that was not much like her, and her father, watching her with a newly awakened interest, said gently—
“I do not wish to distress you, my dear. Perhaps there is something in this that I do not understand. I have no wish to force your confidence. We will say no more about it.”
But Bride rose quickly, and came and knelt down beside her father, turning her sweet trustful face up to his.
“Papa, do not speak so, please—as though I would not tell you everything in my heart. I think I should like you to know. I did not say anything at first—I did not know whether Eustace might have done so or not, for he went the very same day, and I think just when it happened I could not have talked about it. But before he went he told me that he loved me, and he asked me to be his wife; but I could not, and so he went away; and I do not know whether he will ever come back any more. That is why I do not know what to say about asking him for Christmas.”
The Duke was silent for many minutes, stroking Bride’s soft hair with gentle fingers, and looking very thoughtfully into her face. She knelt beside him, only thankful for the caressing touch, which was still sufficiently infrequent to stir her pulses and awaken a sense of indescribable happiness.
“So he asked you to be his wife, and you refused him. What does that mean, Bride? Does it mean that you do not like him?”
“No, papa; it means that I do not love him.”
The Duke paused and looked into the fire. The expression on his face made the girl ask quickly—
“You are not vexed with me for answering as I did?”
“No, my child, I am not vexed. You were right to answer according to the dictates of your own heart. And yet, had things been a little different with Eustace, I would gladly have seen you his wife.”
A faint glow of colour stole into Bride’s face.
“If things were different with Eustace,” she said very softly, “I think perhaps I could have answered differently. I think about him a great deal. I am grateful for his love, and it hurts me to have none to give in return; but as things now are, I cannot give it to him. He grieves me so often. I know that he would make me miserable if I had let his earnestness carry me away. He might be so great, so noble, so good, but he just fails in everything; and I think he would break my heart if I were his wife.”
The Duke looked earnestly into her earnest eyes.
“It is his views that stagger you? Yes, my child, that is what I feel about him—and them. I will not deny that when first he came to us I had hopes that you and he might learn to love one another. You will never be anything but a rich woman, Bride, even though Penarvon and its revenues must go to Eustace. You will have your mother’s ample fortune, and everything I have to leave independently of the estate. You will have wealth and position; but you are very lonely. You have no near relations, and your mother’s health made it impossible for you to be taken to London and presented and introduced to society. Your life has been a very solitary one, and I have regretted it. I confess I had hopes with regard to Eustace; but when I learnt what manner of man he was, and how he stands pledged to a policy which I can never approve in the abstract, though I will not deny that some of its concrete measures are just and fair, I began to feel differently on the subject. And you have the same feelings, it seems, as I.”
Bride slipped to a footstool at her father’s feet, and leaned upon his knee with his hand still held in hers, and her face turned towards the fire.
“Papa,” she said, “I do not think it is Eustace’s Radical views which repel me, except in so far as they are bound up in those which to me are both sinful and sad. I know that he has the welfare of this land and its people as much at heart as you; that he loves his country and the poor in it as we love them; that he wishes to raise and teach and make them better and happier. I know he would spend his life and his fortune in the cause and grudge it nothing if good could be done. There is a great deal that I admire and love in Eustace; but, ah! I cannot divide into two distinct parts his political views and those other views of his which are so integral a part of his character. To me they seem interlocked at every point, and therefore at every point I see something which repels me—something which I shrink from—something which seems to me untrue and evil in essence, even though on the surface so much may be said for it. I do not know if you understand me. Sometimes I scarcely understand myself—hardly know how to put my thoughts into words; but they are there, always with me; and the more I think, the less I can feel that the two things can ever be altogether divided.”
“What two things?” asked the Duke. “I do not think I follow you.”
“I mean, papa, the spiritual and the intellectual side of our nature. You know we have a threefold nature—body, soul, and spirit; but yet it is all one, and I think people make a great mistake when they seek to try and divide the physical and the intellectual from the spiritual. Eustace does—in practice, if not in theory. He wishes to gain for the poor an improved condition of bodily comfort, and I am sure this is a kindly and a right wish. He has told me things that make my blood curdle about the awful misery and want reigning in many places. He wants to raise men intellectually, to think for themselves, to learn many things which will help in their advancement, to strive after a better standard, and to be disgusted at their present ignorance and degradation. But having done that, he stops short. He has no wish to quicken in their spirits the love of God, which would purify these other desires and hold in check the baser passions they so often arouse without that curb. Of their spirits he takes no heed—how should he, when he does not even admit that there is an inner and spiritual life—when he is content to remain in ignorance of everything beyond the limits of his own understanding, and to assert that nothing can be positively taught as truth which cannot be proved by the finite intellect of man? I may not put his case quite justly, because he does not speak of these things openly to me. He tries to pass them over in vague words, and keep the talk to ‘practical matters.’ But I have heard enough to know what he does think—to know that he has no faith in the Crucified Saviour—in an Incarnate God—in a Sanctifying Spirit; and without that faith, how can he hope to lead men aright? Ah! he will never do it!”
The Duke looked down at the girl’s face seen in profile as she half raised it towards him, and he marvelled at her, yet traced in her words the outcome of her mother’s teaching, and felt as though his wife were speaking to him through the lips of her daughter. He had always regarded his wife as something of a saint or angel—recognising in her deep spirituality a calibre of mind altogether different from his own, and in her faith, intense and vivid, a something vastly different from his own dry orthodoxy. He had often listened to her in wonder and amaze, half lifted up by her earnestness, half shrinking from following her into regions so strangely unfamiliar; but there was in Bride’s line of argument a thread of practical common-sense which aroused in him a curiosity to know more of her mind, and he said tentatively—
“You mean that you do not believe even in political reform unless it is based on the highest spiritual motives?”
“I think I mean,” answered Bride thoughtfully, “that I do not believe there can be any true reform at all that does not come from a spiritual impulse. How can I say it best? Eustace is fond of quoting the Bible to me. He bids me remember that we are called upon by Christ to love our neighbours as ourself, and goes on to point out that he is trying to work upon that principle. But he forgets that we are first bidden to love God with all our soul and mind and strength, and that the brotherly love is the outcome, the corollary of the love to God which should be the leading thought of our whole life.”
“Yes!—and what do you deduce from that?”
“Oh, papa, can you not see? Look what those men are doing who think that they can love their brothers and do them good without loving God first and best! Look what Eustace has done!—stirred up strife and discontent all round the country, landed poor Saul in a prison, provoked deeds of violence, lawlessness, and reckless wickedness—deeds that he himself would be the first to deplore and condemn, yet which are the direct outcome of his teaching. These men love their brothers, yet they stir up class hatred wherever they go—and why? It is because they forget that love of God must come first if any good is to come; it is because, though they themselves love their fellows, they cannot teach love of mankind to these more ignorant men whom they would lead. When men do not understand the sweetness of obedience to the perfect law of God, how can they ever be taught the duty of obedience to the imperfect law of man?—and yet we know that obedience to law—even when that law is sadly imperfect—is God’s will and ordinance, and that it brings its blessing with it. Oh, if men would go about teaching the people to love God with all their heart and soul and strength, to love each other in the bond of unity and peace, and to pray for their rulers and governors, that God would turn their hearts from all thought of oppression and tyranny, and make them to be just and merciful rulers of the people, then indeed might our land become a country blessed by God and relieved from the burden of her woes! If great and small would look to God for His guidance in all things, and cease warring with each other in anger and jealous hate, then would true reform begin. But when the cleverest, and often the most earnest men of the day leave God out of their thoughts and plans, and smile at the thought of working through the power of His name, then what can we expect but confusion and anarchy, and a slowly growing discontent amongst the people, which will lead at last to some terrible end? Eustace says that this movement is but the beginning of a huge wave that will sweep right over the country, and end by making the people—the masses—the rulers of the world. He looks upon that as an era of universal good to all—a Utopia, as he calls it—which is to supersede everything that has gone before—including Christianity itself—in its perfection of all human systems and the development of his gospel, ‘the greatest good to the greatest number.’ But though I think it will come—I think we can see that in the prophetic words of Scripture about the latter days—I fear it will come with more fearful misery and terror and tyranny than anything that has gone before. It is the men who practically refuse Christ—the Incarnate Son of God—though they may use the name of Christ still for an abstraction of their own, who will welcome the Antichrist coming in his own name. I think men do welcome any leader now who comes in his own name, and almost makes himself a god. Was it not so with Napoleon Buonaparte, whom some almost believed to be the Antichrist himself? It is those who come to them in the name of God whom they will not hear; for if they look to God as the Head, they must keep His laws; and men who are striving after bringing about this new era of happiness on the earth, do not want to do that. They like their own ways best.”
There was a long silence after this. Bride had paused many times for her father to speak, and had then gone on with her train of musing, almost forgetting she had an auditor. After a prolonged pause, the Duke said slowly—
“So this is why you could not bring yourself to marry Eustace?”
“Yes,” she answered softly; “I do not think there could be happiness for us, thinking so differently. He thinks now that he could give up everything for my sake—but I know him better than he knows himself. Besides, I would not wish him to give up anything for my sake; if he gives it up, it must be because he knows and feels it to be contrary to the law of God—and I do not think such an idea as that has ever entered into his head.”
“Yet if you could get him to give up some of his wild notions for love of you, it would be a step in the right direction,” said the Duke thoughtfully; but Bride shook her head.
“No, not in the right direction—it would be doing evil that good might come—teaching Eustace to act against his conscience and better judgment, just to please me. It would be like what he is doing himself when he stirs up the evil passions of men to try and overthrow a great abuse. He admits the present evil, but says the end will justify the means, and that the evil is an incidental detail, whilst the good will remain permanent. That is where we cannot agree. And we are not likely to agree when Eustace really admits no outward standard of right and wrong, but abides by his own judgment and the prompting of his individual conscience. And even what he cannot defend he excuses—his conscience condemns, but his judgment palliates the wrong—and there is nothing stronger and more perfect and holy to which to appeal. That is the most terrible thing of all to me, and, oh! how terrible it must be in the sight of God.”
Bride had Eustace very much on her mind and heart just now. She had promised to pray for him, and she did this with increasing earnestness as the days went by. She prayed too for the unhappy Saul, wearing out his weary term of imprisonment, visited from time to time by Abner, who looked years older ever since the trouble of that August night. He brought back disquieting accounts of the prisoner to his young mistress, who never failed to ask after him. Saul was utterly impenitent and hardened. He had thrown off all semblance of outward faith, and was an open advocate of the very darkest and baldest forms of atheism. He had learnt this fearful creed from the cobbler, by this time lying under sentence of death; but Bride recognised with a shudder now and again, as she talked with Abner and heard his sorrowful accounts of Saul’s words, the influence upon him of Eustace’s more subtle scepticism. Here and there a word or phrase came in where she recognised her cousin’s mind. Doubtless Saul had opened his heart on this point too with his master, and Eustace had probably only confirmed him in his unbelief by his assertions of the impossibility of knowing the truth where all thinking men were at variance.
The thought of these two men haunted her with a persistence that was wearying. She was haunted too by thoughts of that condemned criminal in his lonely cell, dying perhaps in utter blackness and infidelity, and passing out into the presence of his Maker without one thought of repentance or submission. Suppose Saul had been called upon to die, would he too have gone forth in that frame of mind? If illness or accident were to smite down Eustace, what would be his method of meeting death? Would they all reject the love of the Saviour? Would they all remain impenitent to the last? And what, ah! what was the fate of those who passed away without one cry for mercy, without one glance towards that Cross whereon the sins of the whole world had been expiated?
This thought became such a terror to her, that she took it at last to her one friend and confidante, Mrs. St. Aubyn, and she had hardly got out her trouble before the Rector himself, unknowing of her visit, entered his wife’s room; and Bride hardly knew whether she were glad or sorry that the question should be referred to him.
It was Mrs. St. Aubyn who told her husband the nature of their talk, and added, as she did so—
“I was going to say that I myself almost doubted whether any human soul could die absolutely and entirely impenitent. We know that the outward aspect of some remains unchanged to the last; but how can any man dare to deny that some strange and mysterious intercourse may not go on in spirit between man and his Maker, unknown and unseen by any human eye? Thought cannot be measured by our time. A few brief seconds may be enough to establish some sort of spiritual communication. Where we are told so little, perhaps it is not wise to speculate too curiously; but I cannot help thinking that where blind ignorance and the doctrine of false teachers has kept a soul away from God, He may yet in His infinite mercy deal with that erring soul at the last in such a way as to break in upon the darkness, and kindle one ray of the Divine love, even with the dying breath. For we know that it is not the will of the Father that one should perish, and that He gave His Son to die for all—only they must approach Him through the living Saviour.”
She looked at her husband as she spoke, and he smiled in response as he said—
“There are mysteries in God’s dealings with man into which we may not too closely look, and especially is this the case in reference to those departed or departing this life; but there is so much that we do know to cheer and encourage us to hope all things and believe all things, that we may well let our minds dwell upon these things, and argue from them that God’s ways are wider and more merciful than the heart of man can fathom.”
“Bride is unhappy about several persons who seem to be wandering so far away from the fold,” said Mrs. St. Aubyn, in her gentle tones. “She is suffering, as we all suffer at some time or another, when those we love seem rather against than with us. Can you say something to comfort her? I think she has come here for a little bit of comfort. Have you not, my child?”
Bride’s soft eyes swam in tears. She was rather unhinged by her own intensity of thought. The motherly words almost broke her down. Mrs. St. Aubyn took her hand and caressed it gently. The clergyman, after a moment of silence, spoke, in his thoughtful tender fashion—
“Yes, we have so much cause for hope, even for those who have gone far, far astray. We must not think of them as sundered from the love of the Father, for we know that He does not so regard them, even though His heart may be full of pain at the thought of their transgressions and neglect. We have such beautiful lessons set before us by our Lord, who knew the heart of the Father as none of us can know it. Let us think, just for one minute, of that wonderful story of the prodigal son.”
Bride raised her face quickly.
“He repented,” she said softly.
“Yes,” said Mr. St. Aubyn, “he had been full of self-will and folly. He had gone very far from the father’s house, and the place which was his there by the father’s wish. He was in a far country. He had squandered the gifts of a loving father—the talents, the faculties, the opportunities—upon unworthy and sinful objects. He had followed the dictates of his own heart, and had not heeded his father’s loving counsel and admonitions; and at the last he was reduced to husks, those unsubstantial and empty husks which are in the end all that is left to us of a life of worldly pleasure, take what form it will at the outset. Only the husks remained, and the hunger of the soul set in, which is the worst hunger of all to bear. When that stage has been reached, the backward glance to the father’s house becomes inevitable. The young man in the far country felt it; and I think there was much more than the mere craving for physical comforts in the resolve which was embodied in the words, ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ There is much more than that in those words of penitence, followed up by the resolve to ask, ‘Make me as one of thy hired servants.’ That was what the son set out to say—‘make me as one of thy hired servants;’ but when he reached his father he could not say it. Why not?”
Bride was silent. The tears were still in her eyes. Mr. St. Aubyn looked at her, looked at his wife, and then went on softly—
“He could not say it because he was ashamed to say it—because the love of his father, the love which was watching for him after all these years of absence, which went out to meet him whilst he was yet a great way off, which wrapped him round in its embrace in that mysterious fulness of fatherhood, shamed him into silence. He could confess his sins and his unworthiness; perhaps at no moment had he ever felt so utterly humiliated, yet he could not say ‘make me as one of thy hired servants’—the father’s love had taught him his place as a son; the father’s love had broken down the last barrier of reserve. Unworthy, humbled to the dust, broken down by his emotion, he yet knew that it was as a son he was received back; and the deep unchanging love of the father shamed him, I say, from trying to seek the lower place. When God gives us the right to call ourselves sons, is it for us to say, ‘Nay, Lord, but let me be as a hired servant?’ Is that the humility that the Lord asks of us? Is that the truest faith?”
Still Bride was silent, and as if in answer to her unspoken thought, Mr. St. Aubyn continued—
“Thank God it is given to some of us to remain ever in the Father’s house. We have not been tempted to stray from it. We live in His love, and seek every day to do Him service. But there is always the peril to us of looking abroad at our brothers who have wandered away, and of asking ourselves, sometimes in tender anxiety, sometimes with a sense of compassionate disfavour, sometimes perhaps in something too nearly approaching scorn, whether for them there can ever be a return to the Father’s house, whether they will ever be worthy to be received there once more, even if they do return; and there are not lacking those amongst us, I fear, who would sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, deny them their place in the home, judging them to have lost it for ever through disobedience and rebellion.”
Bride clasped her hands together, her soft eyes shining.
“Oh, go on,” she said softly; “tell me the rest.”
“It has been told already, my child, told in the reception of the erring son, not as a stranger or a servant, but as a son. The love of the Father transcends our love for our brethren, as much as did the father’s love transcend that of the jealous elder son. It is not for us to despair for the wanderers, for the Father does not despair of them. He watches for them, and when their faint and lagging footsteps are homeward turned, irresolutely perhaps, fearfully perhaps, despondently perhaps, while they are a great way off he goes Himself to meet them. He sends no servant; He sends no brother even; He goes Himself. And then, when the lost son feels the Father’s arms about his neck, hears the Father’s voice speaking in his ear, the faint and fearful love of his heart is turned to a deep stream of true filial devotion, and he knows himself in all his abasement and humility for a son, and the first word he speaks, amidst his tears, is the word ‘Father.’ And after that word is spoken there can be no talk of being a hired servant. Father!—our Father—that is the essence of Christ’s redeeming work on earth.”
“Thank you,” said Bride, drawing a long breath; “I think you have given me comfort. I was too much like the elder brother, too much inclined to despair of those who had strayed away. I will think of them differently now. Surely they will one day turn back to the home again.”
“I trust so; we can at least pray that it may be so. Prayer is the strongest power there is for leading men back to God; and I often think and note that, when He would draw to Himself an erring son who will not pray for himself, He puts it into the heart of a brother or a sister to pray for him, and so the erring one is drawn back towards the Father’s house.”
Bride’s face quivered as she held out her hand in farewell, but she went home greatly comforted.