Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

But the discussion ended at last as all such do, each man thinking as he did before, though glad of the opportunity of exchanging ideas with a scholar and person of intellectual acumen.

“We can at least agree to differ,” said Mr. St. Aubyn, as he shook hands warmly. “We can be friends, even though we have our private thoughts about each other’s folly. You are young yet. You have your tilt with the world before you. It is natural to your age and temperament to take nothing on trust, to examine all for yourself. Perhaps in the days to come you may learn the lesson which other philosophers of your own school have done—that there is no living on systems and philosophies—that the hungry human heart of man must have more to feed on than husks. Well, there is the Bread of Life waiting for you when you are willing to receive it. I think the day will come when you will take it at the hands of the all-forgiving and all-loving Father.”

Eustace smiled, and pressed the hand he held. He was no bigot, and he had a vein of poetical imagination within him to which these words appealed. Besides, Bride was standing by, and he would not willingly have pained her. He did not know how much she had heard of the previous discussion, nor how much she would have understood if she had heard. He said his adieus cordially, hoped he and Mr. St. Aubyn would often meet, and gave his arm to his cousin to escort her home again.

He was sufficiently thoughtful himself that his silence did not strike him till they had walked some way; but when he did strive to speak on subjects which generally commanded her interest, he found her absolutely unresponsive.

He looked at her, and saw that her face was cold and tranquil in its statuesque beauty. The light which so often beamed in her eyes was extinguished now. She was very pale, and moved mechanically, and as though with something of an effort. He asked her if she were tired, but received a monosyllabic negative; and then he made one more effort to interest her by a theme which had never failed heretofore.

The ignorance of the peasantry was with her, as with him, a source of pain and dissatisfaction. She and her mother had been planning, before the death of the latter, how some small beginning might be made to get the children taught just such rudiments of knowledge as should raise them above the level of the beasts they tended. Hardly a single labourer or respectable working man in country districts could either read or write. Sometimes a substantial farmer could do no more than set his name to a bill; and clever lads, who might have raised themselves in the world, were kept down and hampered all their lives by the inability to master the rudiments of education. Bride’s grief was that none of the villagers and fisher-folks could read the Bible—that it must remain to them a sealed book, save when others expounded it to them. Eustace’s objection to ignorance was very differently grounded; but hitherto the subject had been one of common interest, and when together they had taken pleasure in discussing Bride’s favourite plan of erecting a small school in memory of her mother, where such men, women, and children as could find time and had the desire to learn might be taught by a qualified person, and gradually win for the place a higher standard of life and faith than was to be found in the surrounding villages.

But even this subject to-day did not rouse in the girl any spark of her wonted interest. She looked at him with steadfast sadness, as he spoke of what he meant to try to do in this matter in other places (he did not, from motives of delicacy, identify himself too much with St. Bride in talking to his cousin), and said very gently, but with a severity which was not altogether without intention—

“I am not sure that the people will not be better as they are, Eustace, than taught as you will be likely to teach them.”

The young man flushed quickly. Philosopher though he was, he was human, and this was a taunt he hardly cared to let pass.

“Do you mean to say that you think I should do them harm and not good by helping them out of their mists of darkness?” he asked, with slight incisiveness of manner.