EUSTACE went back to London about ten days after the election at Pentreath. Parliament was to meet in June, and there was much of importance to be discussed beforehand. He and Sir Roland travelled in company, and the Duke’s farewell was warmer and more cordial by many degrees than it had been on the occasion of his last departure. As for Bride, there had been something so sweet and subtly tender in their relations during the past few days, that the parting with her was wonderfully hard. Eustace lay awake the whole of his last night at the castle, thinking of her, and wondering how he could bear to say adieu; and when they met in the morning, her eyes were heavy and her face was sorrowful, as though she too had kept vigil and dreaded the coming day. In point of fact, Bride had kept vigil in a very literal fashion, for she had been kneeling in prayer for Eustace very many hours of that summer’s night—praying that he might be delivered from any and all of those perils which might happen to the body whilst travelling through an excited country; but above all, praying that he might be kept safe in those assaults of evil that might assail and hurt the soul—that he might be strong to resist temptation, that he might be the champion always for good, yet discriminate and discern the moment when evil crept in, and where party spirit took the place of the true desire after the best welfare of the nation. She understood far better than she had done a year ago the difficulties of that strife, and where once she would have stood aloof with a sense of pained disappointment and disapproval, she would now, as it were, stretch forward a helping hand, and strive to show the firm path amid all the quagmires of strife and emulation. As she clasped hands with Eustace for the last time, and their eyes met, some strange electric current seemed to pass between them, and, as though in answer to spoken words, he said, in a low moved tone—
“I will be true—I will be faithful—I will strive to fight the good fight, and you will be my best helper.”
She did not answer with her lips, but her eyes made amends for that. Suddenly Eustace came one step nearer, put both his hands upon her shoulders, and bent his head and kissed her on the lips. For a single second she started, as though the touch of his hands had alarmed her, but the next moment she looked straight into his eyes, and yielded her lips to his for that last salute.
“God be with you, Eustace,” she whispered; and as the young man rode away he felt he understood for the first time in his life the true meaning and application of the simple and oft-used phrase, “Good-bye.”
Bride stood where he had left her, in the middle of that anteroom where their parting had been exchanged. Her face was slightly flushed; there was a strange gleam of vivid light in her eyes; the sweet mouth was tremulous with emotions strongly stirred. The Duke, who had witnessed the parting between them, looked at her with a veiled inquiry in his eyes. Bride, coming back to everyday life, saw that look and answered it.
“It is not what you think, papa,” she said very softly, “yet I think Eustace and I belong to one another now. I do not know how else to say it. It seems as though there was something linking us together stronger than ourselves.”
A slight smile lighted the old man’s face.
“I am glad to hear that, my child,” he said gently. “I am far better pleased with Eustace this time than I was before. He has greatly grown in wisdom and moderation—greatly improved. I believe he will turn out one of those men whom the world needs. He is after all a Marchmont, and the Marchmonts have generally the gift of government in some form or another. A young and ardent temperament may be led astray at the outset; but the experience of life gives ballast; and there seem to have been many influences at work upon Eustace, moderating his impetuosity, and showing him the reverse side of the shield.”
“I think he is learning a great deal,” answered Bride softly; “I am glad you feel the same about him.”
She could not settle to her ordinary avocations that day. There was a subtle sense of exhilaration and happiness in her pulses which made active exercise needful to her. She had her pony saddled, and started to ride along the cliffs to St. Erme. She wanted to be alone for awhile to think and muse upon the sudden sense of new happiness that had come into her life. She had visits to pay at St. Erme’s which had been waiting for a day of leisure. Eustace had filled much of her time of late, but now she must learn to do without him. She rode quietly onward, with the sunshine about her, and the soft breeze fanning her cheek and lighting her eyes. There came over her, almost for the first time in her life, a sense of the beauty and joyousness of it, even in this fallen world of sorrow and sin. Before she had thought, almost exclusively at such times as these, when alone with nature and at peace with herself and all the world, of the brightness and glory of the Kingdom. Her heart had had little here to feed itself upon, and she had dwelt in the thought of the glory which shall be revealed. But to-day she felt as though she was experiencing a strange foretaste of that glory and happiness in this inexpressible sense of sweetness and love. An atmosphere of joy seemed to enwrap and envelop her. She scarcely understood herself or her heart; but she was happy with a happiness that was almost startling, and in her head some words seemed to set themselves to the joyous hymn that nature was singing all the while.
“I will be faithful—I will be true!” ... “God be with you!”
Her absorption of mind did not hinder her from paying her visits and entering with full sympathy and tenderness into the trials and troubles of those she had come to see. The sight of her was always very welcome to the simple people who had known her from childhood, and who regarded her something as an angel visitor, as they had regarded her mother before her.
Her visits paid, she was about to turn homewards, when, as she was passing the gate of the rectory, she encountered Mr. St. Aubyn riding forth on his sturdy cob. They exchanged greetings gladly.
“I am on my way to St. Bride,” he said, smiling. “Shall we go in company? or are you coming to pay a visit to my wife?”
“I think I will ride back with you,” said Bride, “and see Mrs. St. Aubyn another day. It will be too hot to be out with comfort if I linger longer. Are you coming to the castle?”
“My errand is to your gardener’s cottage. My good friend Mr. Tremodart has asked me to visit young Tresithny in his terrible affliction. He seems to close his heart and his lips against all the world. My kind friend at the parsonage thought I might have more success in dealing with him; but I fear me the time has not yet come when the words of man will avail aught.”
Bride’s face was very sorrowful.
“It seems so sad,” she said softly, “so very, very sad. Oh, I am grieved for Abner. He looks aged and bowed like an old man, yet his faith never fails. He is a lesson to us all. ‘The child of many prayers,’ he calls Saul, and he will not give up hope. But it must be terrible for him to have to sit by and hear the poor young man shouting out all sorts of horrible imprecations and blasphemies in his delirium and pain. No one can tell whether he quite knows what he is saying; but his words are terrible to hear. Widow Curnow has come to help to nurse him, and I hear almost more from her than from Abner. I hoped he would have been able to see my cousin Eustace before he went to London; but he has never been enough himself, and all excitement has to be avoided. I believe Eustace has the most influence upon him of any person in the world. He has won his affection, and I fear poor Saul knows more of hatred than of love towards the world at large.”
“He has had a very sad life,” said the clergyman sorrowfully, “a life of spiritual revolt against the very conditions of his existence, as well as a mental and physical revolt against the wrongs of a world which can never be set truly right, save by the advent of One to whom in their blindness these would-be reformers never look for guidance, still less join in the cry for Him to appear and take the reins of government Himself. It is sorrowful to think of—that the very men most forward in the struggle to do justice to their fellow-men, are often the most careless about giving God His dues. They will render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, but will they render to God the things that are God’s? How often, as one hears them speak or reads the words they are speaking to the nation, does one say in one’s heart, ‘Lord, open their eyes so that they may see!’ for philanthropy alone will never raise or purify the world; it must be joined with a living faith in a living God, and the first love and service of our hearts must belong to God; the second, given to our neighbours.”
Bride looked with a sudden questioning wistfulness into the clergyman’s face.
“Mr. St. Aubyn, do you not think that a man who loves mankind with a true and unselfish love must somewhere in the depths of his heart have a love for God also, even though he may not know it? Is not love in its essence Divine? and can there be a true and pure love that does not in some sort own allegiance to God?”
Mr. St. Aubyn’s face was serious and thoughtful.
“Pure and true love is indeed Divine in its essence; but there is a carnal and earthly love too, which is but a travesty of God-given love, and burns to its own destruction. I think man often confuses these two loves, and sometimes calls the lower one the higher. Perhaps no eye but God’s can really distinguish altogether the gold and the dross, but we can sometimes judge the tree by its fruit. How often do we see evil fruit springing from a tree which we have thought to be good! We are deceived sometimes, but our Heavenly Father never!”
“Yes! I think I know what you mean. I have seen something of that, as in poor Saul’s case. The fruit is a sorrowful crop, and yet he means nobly and well, I am sure. But there is no love of God in his heart; and yet I sometimes wonder whether perhaps the love for man does not come first with some: ‘If he loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?’ There are words very like that somewhere.”
“True, God’s love is so beautiful and infinite, and His patience with His erring children so inexhaustible, that He will do everything in His power to lead their hearts to Him. We are taught and entreated throughout the Bible to seek first the kingdom of heaven; to give the whole of our strength, and mind, and heart, and soul to God in loving submission; to be living members of His Body first, and then members one of another; but as though He would make provision for the weakness and frailty of the flesh, and the infirmity and lack of faith in human nature, we find here and there just such loving touches as show us that our Father will lead us to Himself by every possible means; that love for our brethren shall be a stepping-stone, if used aright, towards that higher and holier love; though perhaps the truer meaning of the words is to teach us that no love for God can be really pure and sincere if it does not carry with it love for our brethren too. The greater must embrace the less; and a man cannot truly love God who is in bitterness with the brethren.”
They rode along in silence for a time then, each thinking deeply. Mr. St. Aubyn was the first to speak.
“Mr. Marchmont has left you then?”
“Yes, he started for London this morning.”
“I knew it was to be soon. He came to say good-bye a few days ago. I was greatly pleased by the talk we had on that occasion.”
Bride looked up quickly.
“I did not know Eustace had been to see you.”
“Yes, he came and sat above two hours with me. We had a most interesting conversation. I almost wish you had been there to hear.”
Bride was silent. She would not ask the nature of the conversation. She knew that Mr. St. Aubyn would tell her all that he felt at liberty to reveal.
Presently he spoke again, a slight smile playing on his lips.
“Long ago, as you know, we had a talk, part of which you overheard, in which Mr. Marchmont betrayed how deeply the philosophy of the destructive rationalists had eaten into his soul. I told him then that he would never be able to rest where he was; that even the philosophers and students who had been so glad to destroy were already finding rest impossible, and were beginning a constructive form of rationalism, in which scope was allowed for an objective as well as a subjective Divinity, and a semblance of Christian faith creeping back, because men invariably find at last that they cannot do without it, although they too often content themselves with half-truths, or very small fragments of the whole truth. Well, he did not agree with me then; but it is wonderful what this year has done for his spiritual life. It is like talking to another man. It was wonderfully inspiring to mark the work of the Spirit in that heart. But I dare say you have found that out for yourself.”
There were tears of joy in Bride’s eyes. She did not turn her head as she answered—
“I have hoped so—I have thought so; but I have been afraid to ask or to hope too much.”
“Ah! you need never fear that. Are we not bidden to ‘hope and believe all things’? Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
“Indeed, I think not,” answered Bride softly.
“It made me think of our talk once about forgiveness and the Father’s love,” continued Mr. St. Aubyn musingly. “It is such a beautiful mystery—that yearning love over all these myriads of disobedient children. And yet never an individual instance of spiritual grace comes before us, but we realise how true it is that the Father has gone forth to meet the erring son whilst he is still a great way off, and is leading him so tenderly home, sometimes almost before the wanderer has realised it himself.”
Bride made no reply: her heart was too full; and so in happy communion of spirit the pair rode down the hill, and through the gate of the castle grounds.
“You will come and see my father when you have been to see Saul?” said Bride. “He would be sorry for you to go without paying him a visit.”
Mr. St. Aubyn promised, and Bride rode on to the castle, and had changed her riding gear for a cool white dress before the clergyman appeared. His face was grave, and he looked troubled and compassionate.
“I have seen him,” he said, in reply to Bride’s look of inquiry, “I have seen him, and I found him stronger in body than I anticipated after all I have heard of the injuries he received. The doctor was leaving as I rode to the door, and said he was making a wonderful recovery. But I fear that the recovery is only one of the body. The soul and spirit are terribly darkened. It seems almost as though the powers of evil had so taken possession there that there was no room for the entry of God’s light. I could not even speak the words I would have done. I saw that to do so would be only to provoke more blasphemies. May God in His mercy do something to soften that hard heart, for only He can do it!”
It was the same tale all the way through where poor Saul was concerned. Impenitent, rebellious, cursing his own fate and crippled condition, and cursing yet more bitterly those he held responsible for the accident—the tyrants who set soldiers upon poor and harmless people, to trample them to death beneath their iron heel for no other offence than claiming the rights of human beings and citizens of the commonwealth. He refused all visits save those from such men of his own fashion of thinking as came to condole with him, and to fan the flame of his bitterness and wrath. Abner soon ceased to try and reason with him. He wrestled ceaselessly in prayer for him, as indeed did many of his neighbours, who were wont to meet together at intervals for the reading the Scripture, and that prayer for the speedy coming of the Lord, which had become one of the leading features of the faith of the little community of St. Bride. It was indeed all that could be done for the unhappy young man; and so soon as he was able to get about on crutches, he announced his intention of going back to Mother Clat’s, and resuming his old life with the fishermen.
There was indeed one very good reason why he should do this. In a boat his lameness would matter comparatively little. He could manage sheet and tiller whilst he sat quietly in the stern; and although there would be moments when he would feel somewhat keenly the loss of his foot and his crippled condition, yet this would be not nearly the same hindrance to him on the water as it would be on land.
A collection had been made for him in the town by a number of those who regarded him as a victim and a martyr. This amounted to a sum sufficient to enable him to purchase a little cutter of his own, that happened to be going cheap at a neighbouring seaport town. Saul’s mates having heard of it, went to look at it, and finally negotiated the purchase, which made him the proud possessor of this fast-sailing cutter, which was significantly said to be far faster and more responsive to wind and tide than any of the Customs boats in these parts.
And now a new life began for Saul. He had always done some smuggling along the coast with his friends the fishermen; but now it became a regular trade with him. Fishing was the merest excuse for the more serious occupation of his life; and as his health and strength returned with this free life on the sea, so did his ferocious hatred to all restraints of law and order grow and increase in him. He delighted in his illicit traffic far more because he was a breaker of the law than because it brought him large gains. He began to be a notable man along the coast; appearing now at this place, now at the other; landing his goods with a skill and daring that made him the idol of the fisher-folk all around, and the terror of the custom-house officers, who tried in vain to catch him, and began to think he must bear a charmed life, so absolutely impossible did they find it to get sight of him.
As for the gentry round, there was a very mixed feeling in their minds with regard to the defaulter and his occupation. They had nearly all of them cellars of excellent brandy and wine that had never paid duty, and were by no means desirous of seeing the illicit traffic too rigidly put down. They winked at it, if they did not actually encourage it; and it was well known that half of them would always buy smuggled goods and ask no question, in spite of all that the indignant officers could urge to the contrary.
The country was soon in a state of pleasurable excitement with the news that the Reform Bill had successfully passed the Commons, and had only to go through the Upper House to become law. The ignorant people considered the triumph already assured, and began to wonder why something wonderful did not immediately happen to change the current of their lives and issue in a new prosperity and affluence. But others shook their heads, and said the Lords would be certain to throw it out, whilst some argued that they would not dare, when the mind of the country had been so emphatically declared.
The Duke was very doubtful as to the result.
“The Duke of Wellington will fight it tooth and nail,” he said to those who asked his opinion, “and I think he will carry the House with him. My kinsman, young Marchmont, tells me that if the Lords refuse to pass it, they will urge the King to make such a number of new Whig peers as shall suffice to carry it in the teeth of all opposition. His Majesty is very averse to such a step, though anxious for the passage of the bill. It remains to be seen what will happen. But I do not think the Iron Duke will give way.”
All this talk sufficed to keep the country alive and excited through the early autumn months. Eustace wrote regularly, sometimes to the Duke, sometimes to Bride; and she wrote to him according to promise, telling him the news of the place, her own particular history, and the doings of Saul. Eustace himself wrote to Saul from time to time, and received answers from the wild young man always breathing a spirit of personal loyalty and devotion; but nothing which passed induced him for one moment to give up his wild life. His boat was always speeding between the shores of England and France. He was seldom at home, and when in the cottage on the beach, seldom to be spoken with by any of those who would gladly have tried to approach him for his own good. Bride once or twice encountered him, and spoke gently to him; but though he stood before her silently and with an outward aspect of respect, he would scarcely give her back a word, and only appeared to listen to her with any willingness when she told him of Eustace.
He sometimes went into Pentreath, and addressed meetings there, in response to invitations from old associates; but his personal interest in the place and in politics seemed to have flagged just now. The passing of the measure upon which his heart had been set took away from him his sense of grievance, and robbed that side of his character of its main element. He shared the half-ignorant expectations of the lower classes, that as soon as the Reform Bill became law some great change in the condition of the people would result immediately from it; and he supposed this change was already going on in other places, and would soon reach the West-Country. If that was so, his task was over for the present, until some new agitation was set on foot. Meantime the free and lawless life he was leading was all-sufficient for him. He was the hero of St. Bride’s Bay, the most successful man all along the coast, and was not only making money fast, but was enjoying his life as he had perhaps never enjoyed it before.
But the old class hatred which had long burned within him was still smouldering as fiercely as before, and only wanted a breath of wind to fan it to a raging flame.
Nor was this breath long wanting; for in November came the news that the Lords had thrown out the bill, that for the moment it was dead, could not pass into law, that the battle would have to be fought all over again (as most people thought), and that the Lords had shown themselves once and for all the fierce and inveterate enemies of the rights and liberties of the people.
A great wave of anger and revolt swept all through England when this thing became known. Perhaps never had she been so near to revolution as that dark November, when the people, eagerly awaiting the advent of some wonderful and semi-miraculous change in their condition, received the news that the measure which was to ensure this had been trampled under foot, and cast ignominiously to the four winds of heaven by the peers of the realm. A cry of execration and hatred ran through the country. Riots and incendiary fires broke out wherever the news penetrated. At Pentreath there was a hot demonstration of popular fury; and Saul had never so raged against his physical infirmity as when he found himself forced to remain at home, eating his heart out in silence, whilst the other men of his persuasion marched with the rioters, and committed acts of lawlessness which gratified their bitter hatred, without, as it happened, doing very much permanent harm in the place.
But the passion that can vent itself is less dangerous than that which is locked up without an outlet, and seethes and smoulders till something suddenly causes a violent explosion. Could Saul have gone with his comrades, perhaps more immediate mischief might have been done, since his was always the most daring spirit; but possibly the blackest chapter of his life might not have been written, and he might have been saved from the depth of iniquity into which he speedily fell.
There is an anger so terrible in its intensity that it works like madness in the brain; and this anger is generally the fiercest when it exists between class and class, and results in reality less from inherent ill-will between the two parties concerned, than from a constitutional and insurmountable difficulty in mutual understanding.
This hatred (which has been at the bottom of many of the world’s tragedies) was now burning with such a white heat of silent fury in Saul’s breast that there began to creep into his sombre eyes a light like that of madness. He would sit up late into the night brooding over the dying embers of the fire, and thinking thoughts that hardly bore putting into words. The wild weather had for the present put a stop to his cruises. He felt the change from the mild autumn days, and often had pain in the maimed member which had suffered from the surgeon’s knife. He was not able to get out much in the cold and wet, and this constant brooding and fierce silent thought were almost enough to turn any man’s brain.
“Revenge! revenge! revenge!” such was the burden of his thoughts; and as he sat pondering over his wild yearnings after vengeance, there would steal into his mind, like whispers from the evil one, memories of what desperate men in past days had done to bring about ruin and disaster. Great ships, containing the wealth of the proud and prosperous, had been shattered on these cruel rocks, and high-born men and women had found a grave in the dark cruel waters, a grave less cruel and dark than the one which engulfed hundreds and thousands of their helpless brothers and sisters through their own greed and selfishness. Would it not be a righteous retribution to lure some such vessel with its living freight upon those cruel “Bull’s Horns”? He knew his comrades would aid and abet such a notion, if he propounded it, for the sake of the plunder and the gain it would bring. But for him the plunder was nothing; he would not touch the gold. But he should feel he had struck a vengeful blow against the rich and the mighty of the land, and then perchance the fever-thirst of his soul would be quenched, and he could rest again.
And thus, brooding and planning and meditating, the dark days slipped by one by one, and the light of madness and unquenchable hatred burned ever brighter and brighter in Saul’s eyes.