Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

BUT if Eustace suffered from doubts and fears, even when embarked upon a cause which he fully believed to be that of right and justice, other people were not exempt from their share of perplexity and mental distress, and certainly the youthful Lady Bride was no exception to this rule. For her, things seemed to have come hardly. Just as she was deprived of the loving counsels and tender training of a mother whom she literally adored, was she confronted by problems and questions which had never entered into her inner life before, and which threatened at times to upheave many of her most cherished notions, or to land her in a perfect sea of doubt and bewilderment.

True, she had not grown up in actual ignorance of the questions beginning to agitate the world, but hitherto she had regarded them, as it were, from an infinite distance: they had not penetrated to her own sphere. She could regard them in perspective, and moralise upon them in an abstract fashion totally distinct from that which confronted her, now that they had in a sense intruded into her very home, and risen up in altogether unexpected proportion before her eyes. Calm as she appeared to the eyes of those about her, remote and aloof as Eustace felt her to be, dwelling in a world of her own, and hardly awake to the throbbing life of that other world of which he was a member, she was in reality far more aware of its pulsating life than he ever dreamed, and far more perplexed by the problems of the times than he as yet suspected. Pity and love for the humble and poor had been instilled into Bride’s heart by her mother from her earliest years, and it was a lesson not likely to be ignored now that she was left so lonely and desolate in her palatial home. Towards her father she felt a deep and reverential affection and compassion, and they had drawn a very little nearer together during this time of common sorrow; but the habits of a lifetime are seldom broken through, even when there is willingness to break them, and the Duke found himself unable to open his heart to his young daughter, as he had learned to do to his gentle wife, even when he was conscious that if the effort could be made it would be abundantly rewarded. He was gentle towards her, and more tender than he had ever been in his life before, but there was no impulse of confidence between them. It was just as hard for Bride to try to speak to him out of her heart (as she had been wont to do to her mother) as for him to cast off his reserve before her; so that when perplexities arose within her, the girl had to fight them out alone, and increasingly hard did she find the battle as day by day fresh thoughts and problems presented themselves before her mental vision.

Mr. St. Aubyn might have helped her, but she was timid of seeking him out. She felt towards him a deep and reverential affection. She had always hung upon his words when he visited her mother, and the two talked together long and earnestly of the coming crisis in the world’s history of which both were keenly conscious, and for which both were preparing themselves in different measure. But the girl had never opened her own heart to the clergyman, or indeed to any person except her mother, and she did not know how to make the first advance now, although feeling often in sore need of guidance and help.

But there was still one person to whom she sometimes spoke when the sense of the burden became greater than she could bear, and that was to the old gardener, Abner Tresithny. She had a great respect, and indeed affection, for the faithful old servant, who from childhood had always been ranked as one of her friends, so that the habit of reserve had not extended to her intercourse with him. Bride had her own outdoor pursuits in the garden, which Abner superintended with his advice and assistance, and as the pair worked together in greenhouse or potting-shed, they often talked of many other matters than the plants they tended. Bride had gained much of her insight into human nature and the state of the village from Abner; and now when Saul’s fervid discourses had stirred up so much excitement there, it was natural that the matter should be mentioned, and that other things of a kindred nature should be discussed.

Abner had been pained and grieved by his grandson’s (apparently sudden) development, and Bride saw that the subject was a sore one with him. With her ready tact she avoided the point which most pained the old man, and opened her heart to him on the subject which had been with her night and day for many a long week now, and which will raise itself before each one of us with a ceaseless iteration so long as this state of sin and misery lasts in the world.

“O Abner, can we wonder?—can we blame them so very much if they do rise in rebellion and revolt? Why is it—ah! why is it that some—not just a few here and there, but hundreds and thousands—even millions of human beings are born into the world to a life of hopeless misery, degradation, and poverty, from which not one man in a thousand has power to raise himself? My cousin has been telling me things—I have heard him and my father talking—and it goes to my very heart to think what it all means. I know—oh! I can never doubt it—that in every human soul there is the power to live the higher life by the grace of the Spirit of God; but oh! Abner, how is it, humanly speaking, possible that this germ of heavenly fire should be developed in such surroundings? How can those encompassed by every physical misery and degradation ever lift their hearts and their hopes heavenward? How can it be looked for? And why does God permit such awful inequalities in the destinies of His children? If He loves us all—as we know He does—why, oh! why are these things allowed?”

The pain in her face and in her voice plainly showed how deeply she had taken to heart what she had gleaned of late respecting the condition of a large section of the population at that time. Abner looked at his young mistress with a world of sympathy in his steady, deep-set eyes, and slowly shook his head.

“There be many of us ask that same question, my Ladybird, as we go on in life, and none of us can rightly answer it. And yet may be the answer is under our hand all the while. It is the sin of man that brought the curse into the world; and ever since the hardness of man’s heart has been making him choose the evil and the curse instead of the way of the Lord and the blessing, and every generation sinks the world deeper and deeper into the slough.”

“I know, I know that. Sin is at the root of all,” answered Bride, with quick eagerness, “but that does not seem to answer everything. It is the awful inequalities of the world that frighten me, and the sense of the terrible gulf that seems to divide such lives as mine from those of the miserable women and children born in the midst of a squalor and misery of which my cousin tells me I can have no conception. We are all born in sin, but we are not all born to utter want and wretchedness. God loves all His children alike: why should such things be? Oh, why should they be?”

She clasped her hands together in a passion of perplexity and pain. The eyes which were so deep and inscrutable to Eustace were full of a pleading intensity of gaze, as though she would wring an answer to her appeal from the heavens themselves. Abner looked at her with a softening of the lines of his rugged face; and as he steadily pursued his task of cleansing from blight a great camellia tree that stood in the centre of the conservatory, he made an answer that was eminently characteristic of him, and which roused the instant interest of the girl.