Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Thus it came about that when Saul first came into contact with Eustace Marchmont, he was not in that state of blank ignorance which was the usual attribute of the rustic of those parts, but had been instructed, although in a one-sided and imperfect way, upon the grievances of his class, and had, at least, been aroused to a sense that the world was all wrong, whether or not he was to have a hand in the setting of it to rights.

Eustace had seen Saul once or twice before he attempted to speak with him. His fine presence always attracted attention, and in his case the strong likeness to Abner gave him another mark of interest for those who knew the elder man. Eustace would have tried to get speech with him before, being impressed by the intelligence and character of the face, but had been somewhat deterred from the fact that he heard Abner had had the bringing up of the boy, and if so, he felt he might not find there the sort of soil he wanted. He liked a talk with the gardener at any time he could get him to engage in conversation, but the two never agreed in their conclusions. Both fully admitted the evils of the day and the need for reformation, but how that reformation was to be effected they never could agree; and although they parted friends, and had a warm esteem one for the other, Eustace secretly wished that Tresithny either knew a little more or a little less, and that his uncle did not possess a servant of such strong and peculiar views, and with so much influence in the place.

If Saul should prove to be a disciple of his grandfather’s, Eustace felt that it would be time wasted to seek to win him to his own view of the situation; whilst, on the other hand, if he could gain the young man as a convert to the new gospel, such a recruit would be a great power in his hand; for no one could look into Saul’s dark handsome face, and note the development of brow and head, without being certain that he possessed intelligence beyond the wont of his fellows, and force of character, which went farther in such a cause than keenness of wits.

But though Eustace often tried to get speech with the young man in a casual and incidental way, he never succeeded in doing so. He went to the farm from time to time and made himself pleasant to the farmer and his family. He walked about the place, and chatted as occasion served with the broad-faced, soft-spoken labourers, who grinned at any small sally he might make, and looked bland, though deferential, if he spoke of matters beyond their ken, as he had a way of doing tentatively, although with an object in view. He began to be talked of as a man with something in his head that was quite unfathomable. All agreed that he was an affable young gentleman, and well-spoken and friendly; but the rustics were shy of him nevertheless, and his chief friends were made amongst the bold and lawless fisher and smuggling folks down in the cluster of hovels beneath the shelter of the cliff. They were more or less at war with the law as it was—at least with the excise laws, which were the only ones about which they knew or cared a halfpenny; and it was easy to convince them that there was something rotten in the present system of administering the law generally, and that the people must combine to insist on a reformation. But even whilst winning grunts and snorts of approval from these rough fellows, Eustace felt that his mind and theirs were really poles asunder, and that the lawlessness they looked upon as the embodiment of welfare and happiness was an altogether different thing from that beautiful justice, law, and order which he strove to believe was to come into the world when his doctrines had leavened and fermented and taken shape. Sometimes he was almost disheartened with his want of success, wondering whether this doctrine of discontent were a wise one to instil into the minds of these wild, fierce fisher-folk. Some of the conclusions they drew from his teaching startled him not a little, as when one of them remarked that, since the great folks were so tyrannical and wicked and selfish, it would be no more that right and a just judgment to lure them to their death by false lights some stormy night, that their goods might fall a prey to the suffering poor; and this savage suggestion was hailed with such enthusiasm that Eustace was sternly horrified, and spoke with terse eloquence against any such wickedness, only to find, as other teachers and orators have found before him, that though it was easy to convince men of the truth of a doctrine towards which they were predisposed, it was altogether another matter to hinder them from deductions altogether false, and foreign to the matter in hand, when these also were to their liking; and that they were far less patient in listening to words that opposed these deductions than they had been to those which suggested them.

It was after some such experiences as these that Eustace had left the fishermen and striven to win the friendship of the rustics, but had been met by the placid stolidity and uncomprehending ignorance which seemed to form almost as absolute a barrier between them as the lack of reason and speech in brute beasts. Indeed, they and their sheep and oxen seemed to understand each other better than he and the labouring men upon the land. It was discouraging and uphill work from first to last; and the one man whom he really desired to gain, and felt certain possessed the stamp of mind and the intelligence he longed to meet, avoided him with a persistence which led him to the conclusion at last that Tresithny had warned his grandson to have no dealings with the gentleman from the castle.

But accident led at last to a meeting, and from that meeting dated the train of circumstances which led to a strange but lasting friendship between the two men whose walks in life lay so widely apart.

Eustace was out upon the downs riding a mettlesome young horse from the Duke’s stable. He was a fearless horseman, but not an experienced one. During the years he had spent in travel and in Germany, horse exercise had not come much in his way, save as a means of locomotion, and then the animals ridden had not been of a fiery kind. He had a firm seat and a steady hand, but he was by no means familiar with the tricks of a flighty young mare, when the spring of the year sets the hot blood of all young things stirring joyously in their veins, and incites them to all sorts of vagaries and extravagant gambols. Eustace was possessed with the master-mind that must always gain the upper hand of any creature under his control; and perhaps he was a thought too stern in his desire after discipline; for in lieu of indulging the wild spirits of his steed with a healthy gallop over the short elastic turf, which might soon have reduced her to quietness and submission, he held her with a strong firm hand, resolved that he and he alone would decide the time when her limbs should be allowed to stretch themselves as they longed to do;—with the effect that the beautiful, high-spirited creature, fretted beyond the limits of endurance, commenced to buck-jump with such alarming persistence and velocity, that Eustace was at last unseated, and measured his length ignominiously upon the short turf, whilst his horse, tossing her dainty head with a gesture of visible triumph, set off at a mad gallop straight across the green down, which she hardly seemed to touch with her feet.

Eustace was not hurt. He had kicked his feet free of the stirrups before he slipped off, and the ground was soft. The mare had avoided touching him with her feet as she sped off, and, save for the humiliation of the fall, and the fear lest the horse should be hurt, Eustace cared little for the accident. He could no longer see the flying steed. The ridge of swelling down hid her from him; but he picked himself up and wondered what he should do next, and whether the creature would find her way home or should be pursued, for she had not headed for her stable, but had gone tearing away over the green turf in a diagonal direction. Brushing the traces of his accident from his clothes, Eustace slowly mounted the low ridge, and then to his relief saw a horseman cantering towards him up the opposite side. A second glance told him that the horseman was none other than Saul Tresithny, and that he was mounted upon the runaway mare, whom he had evidently captured before she had had time to do herself a mischief.

Two minutes later Saul had come to a standstill beside him, and was on his own feet in a twinkling.

“I hope you are not hurt, sir,” he said shortly.