Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Eustace living—though by no means out of danger! Ah! but was it not enough just now to be assured that the life was still in him? Surely since God had given him back in answer to her prayers, He had spared him for some great purpose. He had brought him to the very gates of death, but had brought him back therefrom already. Was not that evidence that he was spared for some good purpose? Might she not look forward in faith and confidence to Him, Who had saved him from these terrible bodily perils, that He would also be with him in any other trial that might lie before him, bodily or spiritual? Need she be fearful or troubled any more after the wonderful experiences of the past night? Eustace had been given back to her prayers. What need she fear when that proof of Fatherly love was hers?

Bride mechanically put the finishing touches to her toilet, and washed from her face the traces of her long vigil; then, unable to remain inactive any longer, she left her room and descended the staircase, the light broadening and strengthening in the sky as she did so, as the sun rose from behind banks of low-lying cloud, and looked forth upon the new day now begun.

The great door at the far end of the hall stood wide open to the breezy morning, and even as Bride reached the foot of the staircase a tall figure darkened it for a moment, and Mr. Tremodart came in with an uncertain air, glancing about him here and there, as if in search of something or some one.

Bride stepped forward and held out her hand.

“You have heard?” she asked briefly.

“Ah yes! it is a terrible thing, a terrible thing! Lady Bride, it makes me feel that I must send in my resignation to the Bishop, and ask him to appoint another pastor to this flock. Surely had I done my duty, they would not now be such savages and fiends! I have been down with them, poor miserable men! I have been hearing their confession. They have been led away by a spirit stronger than their own. The Lord forgive me! Perhaps had I been more to them and more with them, they would not have hearkened to such evil counsel!”

The clergyman’s remorse was painful to see. Bride had grown to feel a great liking and respect for Mr. Tremodart during the past year. That he was somewhat out of his element as a parish priest, she never attempted to deny. That he had been placed in his present position without any real aptitude for his vocation, he never himself denied; but he had tried to do his duty according to his own lights; and though often too much engrossed in his favourite pursuits to give all the time he should have done to his flock, he had never neglected to respond to a summons from any one of them, however personally inconvenient, and had always striven to relieve distress, both of body and mind, as far as in him lay, though his methods were sometimes clumsy, and his words halting and lame.

Still on the whole he had won the respect and liking of his flock, and the confidence of the black sheep better, perhaps, than a more truly earnest and devoted man might have done. The fishermen were not afraid of him. They knew he understood their ways of thinking, and had a sympathy with them even in their peccadillos. He did not receive or purchase smuggled goods, as too many of his profession did in those days; but he did not look with any very great displeasure on a traffic that he had been used to all his life, and which seemed almost a part of the economy of life. But with all his faults and his easy-going ways, he had never for a moment encouraged indifference to human life or suffering; and the knowledge that the men of Bride’s Bay had deliberately lured to her doom a great vessel, from which only one man had been rescued alive, was a terrible thought. The moment the news had been brought to him, Mr. Tremodart had hastened down to the shore to learn the truth of the matter, and had now come to the castle with a grave face and heavy heart, to seek news of the survivor, and the man who had been found with him.

“Perhaps we might all have done more for them than we did,” said Bride gently; “but men will listen so much more readily to the voice of the tempter than to those who would hold them back from their sinful deeds. And Saul Tresithny had such power over them! I fear it was he who led them on.”

“Ay! ay! there can be no doubting that. One and all, they all say it. ’Twas his doing—his planning from first to last. They, poor fellows, thought of the spoil to be had, and listened with greedy ears; but he was thinking darker thoughts, I fear. They say he wanted nothing for himself. All his mind was fixed upon some evil hope of vengeance. His hatred for mankind had driven him well-nigh mad. Ah! Lady Bride, I think that we may well say that if God is Love—as we have His blessed assurance—then the devil is—hatred. For sure only the devil himself could so have inspired that spirit of hatred which could vent itself in such an act as that of last night.”