Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

“You will not go on grieving him, Eustace!” she pleaded; “you will give it up?”

“Give what up, Bride?” he asked quietly.

“The actions which grieve him, which stir up strife in our peaceful community, which rouse hatred and foment discontent. Ah! Eustace, if you would only give yourself to a nobler task, how much you might do for the cause of right!—whilst now you are, in the hope of doing good, fomenting the worst passions of the human heart, and leading men to break not only the laws of man, but those of God.”

Perhaps never before had Eustace been so strongly tempted as at that moment to abandon the cause to which he was pledged. Through all the weeks he had spent beneath the roof of Castle Penarvon, he had been conscious of two strong influences working upon him—one the desire to enkindle in the minds of the ignorant rustics the spark of discontent and revolt against needless wrongs, which should result in reformed legislation, and the raising of the whole country; the other, the keen desire to win for his wife the beautiful and unapproachable girl he called cousin, and who every day exercised over him a stronger and stronger power. With him it had been a case of love almost at first sight. Eustace was one of those men who are always striving to attain and obtain the best and highest good which the world has to offer, not as a matter of preference only, but as a matter of principle. Hitherto he had never seen a woman who stirred his heart, for he had never seen one who in any way corresponded to the lofty ideals of womanhood which he had kept pure within him from boyhood. His whole mind and soul had been given to study, to learning, and to the attainment of those objects upon which, as his mind matured, his whole being became set. Woman as an individual had neither part nor lot in his life until he met his cousin Bride, and knew before he had been many days at Penarvon that in her he had found his ideal. That she was a mystic, that she held extraordinary and altogether impracticable views of life, and lived in a world of her own which could never be his, he was perfectly aware; but then he was also aware that the ideal woman of his dreams must likewise live a life apart, wrapped in her own pure imaginings and Divine ideals, until the power of love should awake within her another and a deeper life, and bring her to a knowledge of joys hitherto unknown. A sceptic himself, he was in nowise daunted to find that the woman of his choice was as devout, and almost as full of mystic fervour, as a mediæval nun. Somehow it all pieced in with his preconceived ideas of perfect womanhood, and he said within himself that this single-minded devotion and power to lead the higher life, when directed into other channels by the kindling touch of a great love, was exactly the force and power most needed for the work which must be that of his own life and of hers who became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

The cause was first with him, the woman second, when Bride was not present; but when confronted by her soft deep eyes, when beneath the spell of her thrilling voice and the magnetic attraction which, with absolute unconsciousness, she exercised upon him, he was often conscious that the cause was relegated to the second place, and that the desire to win this woman for his wife took the foremost position there. It was so just at this moment. The words spoken by the Duke had struck somewhat coldly upon him. They were the echo of a thought which sometimes obtruded itself unsuggested when he was in conversation with those very men of whom he hoped most in the forwarding of the cause—the thought that after all he and such as he were playing with edged tools, and were rather in the position of boys experimenting with explosives of unknown force. They might safely reckon that what they desired might be accomplished by their means, but were they equally certain that, whereas they only meant to break down and overthrow certain obstructions which were standing in the way of progress and a better order, the forces they had set in motion might not sweep over all appointed bounds and land them in a state of confusion and anarchy they never contemplated for a moment at the outset? This was, he knew, the cry of all supporters of the old order, the time-honoured cry against any sort of progress or reform. But might there not be perhaps some sound substratum of truth at the bottom?—and were he and his comrades wise to listen always with a smile of pity, and even of contempt, when that plea was brought forward?

Just for a moment, under Bride’s pleading glances, under the impression produced by the Duke’s warning, Eustace was tempted to fling to the winds everything save his overmastering desire to call Bride his own, to win her love even at the sacrifice of his own career; but before the burning thoughts had been translated into words or had passed his lips, other and cooler considerations pushed themselves to the front, and he checked himself before attempting a reply. After that his words were chosen with care, and fell quietly and resolutely from his lips.

“I would do much, very much, for you and for your father, Bride; but I cannot, even for you, be untrue to myself, and to the cause of suffering humanity. The woes of our brethren are crying aloud for redress. Christianity and humanity are alike disgraced by the scenes which are daily enacted in this Christian land. Believe me, Bride, you and I are nearer in heart than you are able yet to see. You have lived your life in this peaceful spot, and know little or nothing of the fearful abuses which stalk rampant through the land. Did you know what I know, had you seen what I have seen, you would know that I am embarked upon a righteous cause, and that the power you call God—which is in very truth the spirit of justice, mercy, and true and lasting peace—is with us. I do not deny that, in stirring up men’s hearts, even in a righteous cause, evil and selfish passions are too often inevitably stirred also. Human nature finds it all but impossible to hate the abuse without hating those who in their eyes at least are the living embodiment of that abuse. We have a twofold mission to execute—to rouse in men a hatred of evil and oppression, whilst at the same time striving to inculcate patience towards those who appear to them to be the incarnation of that evil. The one task is of course easier at the outset than the other; but we do not despair of accomplishing both. No reformation of abuses was ever yet made without the stirring up of evil passions—without many and great dangers and mistakes; yet the world has been better, and purer, and wiser for these same reforms, and so it will be again. Ah! Bride, my beautiful cousin, we want noble-hearted women to aid us in the task. If we men can rouse the slumbering to claim the rights of humanity for themselves, you women can pour oil on troubled waters, and instil gentle and tender feelings into rude hearts that we find it hard to subdue. If you would walk hand in hand with me in this thing, Bride, how much might not be accomplished for Penarvon and those poor benighted people in whom your own interest is so keen! Bride, will you not let it be so? Will you not help me? Will you not help a cause which is pledged to raise the people of this land from misery and degradation, and teach them that even for them there is a higher and a better life, if they will but strive and attain to it?”

The girl’s eyes were fixed upon his face in one of her inscrutable gazes, in which she seemed to be looking him through and through, and reading his very soul, whilst hers was to him as a sealed book.

“Ah! Eustace,” she said very softly, “would that you were striving to teach to them the true meaning of the higher life. Then, indeed, would I most gladly, most willingly, follow where you lead; but, alas, alas! I fear me it is not so. Oh, my cousin, can you truly tell me that you yourself are striving after the higher life—the highest life—the life of the Kingdom—so that you can teach it to another?”

He did not answer—for, indeed, he did not fully understand her; he only knew that in speaking of the higher life he and she meant something altogether different, although he still trusted that the difference was but superficial, and that deeper down lay an accord which would some day become patent to both. Meantime, with her eyes upon him, he knew not what to say; and Bride, with a look of sorrow and gentle compassion that went to his heart, rose and glided away, leaving him alone in the great dining-hall, with the flicker of many wax candles mingling with the fading light of the March evening.