Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Saul had not thought much of Genefer all this while, as presumably she had been well aware; but the sight of her distress touched him, and he would have approached her to offer some rude sympathy, had she not suddenly sprung up and faced him with blazing eyes and a fury only second to that which her father had displayed.

In the emphatic and most idiomatic vernacular, which is always used by natives in moments of excitement, she told Saul her opinion of him and of his conduct; she let loose in a flood all the mingled pique, anger, disappointment, and jealousy which his conduct of the past months had inspired. That he should presume to ask her love, and then care for nothing but wild notions that savoured to her of the devil himself, and which all right-minded people reprobated to the last extent, was an insult she could not put up with. Woman-like, she had looked to stand first and to stand paramount with handsome Saul, when once she had permitted him to woo her; and instead of this, he had heeded her less and less with every week that passed, and had even refused to remain on Sunday at the farm when she had asked it as a favour; and at last had done this mischief to her father through his mischievous, ill-conditioned tongue. She would have none of him, no, not she! He might go to his friends the fisher-folk, or to the slums of Pentreath for a wife, if he wanted one!—she would have none of him! He had been false to her, he had treated her shamefully, and now he might go. She never wished to see him again! And bursting into tears (the almost invariable climax to an outburst of anger with women of her class) Genefer rushed from the room, and Saul, looking white about the lips, but with a blaze in his eyes which made all who met him shrink away from him, put together the few things he had at the farm besides his books, and stalked away into Pentreath, where he found an audience as ready to listen to him as he was to address them.

And this is how it came about that St. Bride was set in a ferment of excitement by the news that there were exciting scenes going on at Pentreath—mysterious outbreaks of popular fury—machines broken in the mills—a statue of the old king standing in the market-place, found in the river-bed one morning greatly shattered by the fall—a baker’s shop looted in broad daylight another day; and over all a sense that there was more to come, and that this was but the beginning of what might grow to rival one of the great risings of the Midlands and the North, when private houses had been broken into, and an untold amount of damage inflicted upon rich men, who had drawn upon themselves the popular hatred.

Now St. Bride, as represented by the fishermen, had no wish to be left out of any enterprise which promised either excitement or reward. It was whispered in all quarters that Saul was at the head of the rioters, and that his was the master-mind there. If so, they would be certain of a welcome from him if they joined his little band; and so it came about that, whilst the boats still lay high and dry upon the beach, the men of the place were almost all mysteriously missing, and their womenfolk professed absolute ignorance as to what had taken them off.

“Oh, Mr. St. Aubyn,” said Bride, with tears in her eyes, as she encountered the clergyman of St. Erme on the downs, bent in the same direction as herself, to the cottage where a sick woman was lying, “do you think it is true what they are all saying, that Abner’s grandson is gathering together a band of desperate men, and intends to try and provoke a general rising, and to march all through the district, breaking machines and robbing and plundering? It seems too dreadful to think of; but wherever I go I hear the same tale. Do you believe that it is true?”

“I trust that you have heard an exaggerated account of what is passing, Lady Bride,” he said; “though I fear that there are troublous days before us; but I think we are prepared for that, and can look without over-much dismay around. Remember, my child, that when we see the beginning of these things coming to pass, we are to lift up our heads, because our redemption draweth nigh. In that is our safeguard and our hope.”

The light flashed into Bride’s eyes.

“Ah! thank you for reminding me. It is so hard to keep it always in mind; but indeed it is like the beginning—men’s heart’s failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. Mr. St. Aubyn, tell me, are the people altogether wrong in demanding redress of those grievances which lie so heavy upon them? Is it right that they should have so little, so very little voice in the government of the nation, when we call this a free and a constitutional form of government? Need we condemn them altogether for doing what their ignorance and misery drive them to do? Are we not also to blame in that they are so miserable and ignorant?”

“In very truth we are, Lady Bride——”

“Ah! no; not Lady Bride to you, when we are alone like this,” she pleaded. “It never used to be so. Let it be Bride again, as though I were a child. Ah! would that I were, and that she were with me! Oh, it is all so dark and perplexing now!”