Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

It was the Duke who first introduced the machinery into the neighbourhood, although he had dismissed no servant of his until three of his men were found tampering with and injuring the new machine, when he promptly sent them about their business. Their bad example was followed by others, and four more were summarily dismissed; whereupon the Duke let it be thoroughly understood that any servant of his taking that line would be promptly discharged, but that he had no intention of dismissing any of those on his estate who were orderly and obedient, and used the improved implements in a right and workmanlike way. This declaration had the effect at Penarvon of stopping depredations for the moment, and no more labourers were sent away; but those who had already received notice were not taken on again: for the Duke, though a just and liberal master, was a stern upholder of law and order, and had no intention of having his will or his authority set at naught by a handful of ill-conditioned fellows, who refused to listen to any other guides than their own blind passions.

These men gravitated naturally into Pentreath, in the hope of finding employment there, only to be met by the news that the mills were turning off hands, owing to the saving of labour by the introduction of improved machinery. The band of what in these days would be termed “unemployed” gathered together by common accord, and roved the streets by day, begging and picking up odd jobs of work as they could get them, and meeting at night in a low tavern on the outskirts of the town to spend their pittance generally on raw spirit, and to talk sedition and treason.

Possibly, had no other power been at work just at that juncture, the whole thing might have begun and ended in talk; but there were other forces in operation, all favourable to the spirit of revolt and vengeful hatred which actuated this small band; and as discontented men of every class draw together by common consent, however various their grievances may be, so did the newly aroused politicians of the place, eager and anxious to awaken the country to a sense of its political grievances, and the urgent need of parliamentary reform, gravitate towards the little band of discontented labourers and operatives, sure of finding in them allies in the general feeling of revolt against the prevailing system, which they had set themselves to amend, and hoping quickly to arouse in them the patriotic enthusiasm which kindled their own hearts.

Saul’s friend the cobbler was the first to address these men on the subject of the hoped-for reform. He went to them upon several evenings, strove to arouse in them a sense of indignation against prevailing abuses and evils, and found his task an easy one. Wherever he made out that the country was suffering from the oppression of tyrants and the greed of the rich, he was received with howls of approval and delight. The answer of his audience was invariably a cry of “Down with it! Down with them!” They would have rushed with the greatest pleasure through the streets, and attacked the houses of the mill-owners, or have broken into the mills and gutted them, had there been any to lead them. But the cobbler was a man of words rather than of action. He was one to foster fierce passions, but his talents did not lie in directing the action which follows upon such an arousing. One Sunday afternoon, it is true, he headed a procession which marched through the streets, shouting and threatening, so that the people shut their shutters in haste, and begged that the watchmen or the military might go out and disperse the mob. No harm, however, came of the demonstration, save that an uneasy feeling was aroused in the minds of the townfolk, who looked askance upon the haggard men seeking alms or employment about their doors, and were less disposed to help them than they had been at first.

Thus the ill-feeling between class and class grew and increased, and it was to a band of men rendered well-nigh desperate by misery and a sense of burning wrong that Saul came down one Sunday, his own heart inflamed by passion and hatred, to supplement the efforts of the cobbler by one of his own harangues, which had already won for their author a certain measure of celebrity.

Saul had greatly changed during the past six months, changed and developed in a remarkable manner. When he stood by the orchard wall making love to Genefer Teazel, he had looked a very fine specimen of his race, and superior in many points to the labourers with whom he consorted, and whose toil he shared; but since the rapid development of his mental faculties had set in, he had altered wonderfully in his outward man, and no one to look at him would believe, save from his dress and the hardness of his hands, that he had spent his life in mere manual toil on a farm. His face, always well-featured, had now taken an expression of concentration and purpose, seldom seen in a labouring man; the eyes were very intense in their expression, and, as the fisher-folk were wont to say, went through you like a knife. His tall figure had grown rather thin and gaunt, as though the activity of the mind had reacted on the body, or else that he had been denying himself the needful support for his strong frame. He looked like a man whom it would not be well to incite to anger. There was a sufficient indication in his face of suppressed passion and fury held under firm control, yet ready to blaze up into a fierce life under provocation. He looked like a man born to be an Ishmaelite in his life’s pilgrimage—his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him—a man in revolt against the world, against society, against himself. A keen and yet sympathetic physiognomist could hardly study that face without a sigh of compassion. Saul Tresithny, with his nature, his temperament, his antecedents, could scarcely have any but an unhappy life—unless he had been able to yield himself in childlike submission to the teachings of his grandfather, and look for peace and happiness beyond the troublous waves of this world, to the far haven of everlasting peace.

Saul had spent the past six months in close reading and study, whenever time and opportunity were his. First from his friend the cobbler, then from his friend the Duke’s heir, he had received books and papers; and out in the fields in his dinner-hour, or trudging to and fro with the plough, or up in his attic at night, with his companions snoring around him, he had studied and read and thought—thought till it seemed often as though thought would madden him, read until he looked haggard and wan from his long vigils, and he found the best part of his pittance of wage go in the purchase of the rushlights by which he studied his books at night. Eustace had lent him histories of other nations—down-trodden peoples who had revolted at last from their oppressors, and had won for themselves freedom—sometimes of body, sometimes of mind, at the sword’s point. Eustace had tried to choose writers of impartiality; but his own bias had been too strong to make him a very good director of such a mind as Saul’s; and when a man of that temperament reaches passages which are not to his liking, he simply skips over them till he reaches what is more to his taste; and Saul had invariably missed out those explanatory and exculpatory pages, wherein the historian shows the other side of the question, and explains how some of the grievances most declaimed against by an oppressed people are the result rather of circumstance, and the changing order of the day, than the direct outcome of a real injustice and tyranny.

So his mind rapidly developed in a fashion by no means desired by his mentor; and so soon as the restraining influence of Eustace was removed, the wild and ardent imagination of the young man had full sway, and he had none to give him better counsel or strive to check the hot intemperance of his great zeal. He avoided his grandfather, and Abner was too wise to force his company where it was not wanted. He would not speak to Mr. St. Aubyn when the latter found him out, and sought, in his gentle and genial way, to get the hot-headed youth, of whom much talk was going about, to make a friend of him, and open out upon the subjects of such moment to all the country. No; Saul maintained a rigid and obstinate silence; and the Rector went away disappointed, for he feared there were evil days in store for Saul. Farmer Teazel, who was a staunch old Tory, and an ardent believer in the existing state of things, even though he admitted times to be bad in the immediate present, had no manner of patience with his new-fangled notions, that were, as he said, “driving honest folks crazy.” He had winked at Saul’s conduct as long as he could, valuing the many sterling qualities possessed by the young man, and hoping every day that he would turn over a new leaf. But his patience had long been sorely tried. Saul, not content with haranguing the fisher-folk down in the hamlet, who were always ready to imbibe any sort of lawless doctrine—their one idea being that the law and the customs were one and the same, and that to revolt against any existing order was a step towards that freedom of traffic which was their idea of prosperity and happiness. Not that they wished the excise duties withdrawn—for that would render abortive their illicit traffic; but they always fancied that there was advantage to be gained from stirring up strife and revolting against established order, and were eager listeners to Saul’s speeches. But not content with that, Saul was working might and main amongst the more placid and bovine rustics, his fellow-labourers on the farm, to emulate the fisher-folk in their restless discontent, and with this amount of success, that when Farmer Teazel, in imitation of his noble landlord, introduced with pride and delight a new and wonderful machine into his own yard, his own men rose in the night and did it some fatal injury, which cost him pounds to repair, as well as delaying for a whole month the operations which it had especially been bought to effect.

This was too much. The farmer was in the main a placid man and a good-tempered one; but he could not stand this, and he well knew whom he had to thank for the outrage. Whether or no Saul had prompted the men to do the mischief mattered little. It was he who had fostered in them the spirit of disobedience and self-will which had been at the bottom of the outrage; and so long as he remained on the place there was no prospect of things being better. Before his anger had had time to cool, he summoned Saul, and a battle of words ensued, which led to the summary dismissal of the young man, whilst the farmer strode out of the kitchen, in which the interview had taken place, in a white heat of rage and disappointment.

Saul stood looking after him with a strange gleam in his eyes, and then his eyes caught sight of Genefer crouching in a corner with her hands over her face.