Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

“You would have me stand before our ministers of the law as the advocate of one who has been lawless, criminal, and the stirrer-up of sedition? Am I to appear before our townsfolks as the supporter of anarchy and arson?”

“No, but of mercy and goodwill towards the erring and deceived,” answered Bride, “as the one man perhaps in the whole place who can so stand fearlessly forward on the side of mercy, when he is known to be held the greatest enemy to the public good, the bitterest enemy these poor misguided creatures have. They hold you to be the embodiment of all that is cruel and crushing—you will show them that you are their best friend. You will plead for them, their ignorance, their inability to see the falsity and folly of their teachers. You will show that Saul has hitherto led an honest and industrious life; that till he was led away by the teachings of Eustace, he was one of the steadiest men in St. Bride. You will tell how he averted the attack on the farm last night, and strive to gain mercy for one who has been only blinded and maddened by others, and has within him the germs of so much that is good. It is a first offence. Surely you can gain mercy for him! Oh, I do not know how to bear the thought that Saul may have to die for what is the fault of Eustace!”

The Duke sat very still, thinking deeply.

“You hold the fault to be Eustace’s?”

“Yes,” answered Bride, slowly and mournfully. “Other causes may have helped, but Eustace set the ball rolling. He taught Saul discontent, as he has tried to teach it to others. He thinks that that is the first step towards trying to make men raise themselves. As Abner truly says, it is beginning at the wrong end; but he cannot see that. If they would but be discontented with themselves first—with their sinfulness, with their vices—if they would rise higher by that repentance and cleansing which would purify their hearts, then there would be hope for them to rise in other ways. But to begin by stirring up all that is most selfish and wicked, all the anger, hatred, and malice, which Christ came down to destroy and overcome—ah! how can they look for good to come? It never will and it never can.”

The Duke suddenly rose to his feet, for the clock had chimed the hour of ten.

“I must be going if I am to go,” he said. “My child, you are your mother’s daughter. Her voice speaks to me in yours. I will do what I can for that miserable man, for her sake and yours.”

Her face quivered as she heard these words, and she turned away to hide her emotion. He could not have spoken words which would more cheer her than these which spoke of a likeness to her mother. Would she ever be able in some small degree to take that vacant place with him?

The day seemed to pass wearily for Bride. Abner was not in the garden. The Duke himself had sent him to the town to try and get speech of his turbulent grandson, and to persuade him, if it were possible, to comport himself with due humility, and without a needless show of defiance before the magistrates that day. None knew better than the Duke how much harm Saul might do to his own cause by an assumption of defiance and impenitence before the arbiters of his fate; and none knew better than he how little chance the young man stood if he were once committed for trial at the County Assizes. Although the spirit of reform was stirring all classes of the community, the feeling against revolution was growing stronger in England with each small outbreak—stronger, that is, in the eyes of the governing powers—and signal examples were made of many obscure persons who had been concerned in turbulent risings and riots. Once before the criminal judges of the land, accused of arson, riot, and such-like misdemeanours, a short shrift and a long halter were almost sure to be his fate. All lay in the Duke’s power to avert a committal, and Abner had been despatched with all speed to seek and use his influence with the impracticable young man, that he might not tie a rope round his own neck by some such speeches as he had made before Captain O’Shaughnessy.

The day seemed interminably long to Bride. She went down to the fishing-village, and spoke earnestly with many of the men (now returned home in that state of sheepish shame and satisfaction that betrayed the fact of their having been engaged in some lawless but by no means profitless undertaking) of the wickedness of such attacks on other people’s property, and this spoiling of other people’s goods.