“You hardly understand, Bride. Your father will have to nominate a member at this election, though probably for the last time. The abuse is yet unredressed, and cannot be redressed till honest men who love their country combine to blot it out. I wish to have the honour and privilege of being among that number; and I am your father’s next of kin, and the man it would be most natural for him to appoint. It lies here; he must either give it to a man who would fight against the good cause, though he would accept the seat without a qualm, or it must go to one like myself, who, recognising the thing as a manifest outrage upon constitutional representation, yet for this last time would take advantage of a pernicious system in order to hurl it down for ever more. I hold that mine is the right position to hold. If I were to stand aside for a man who would take the seat and strive to hold back the cause of reform, I should be a traitor to the cause and to my country. I ought not to stand idly by without striving to win it for myself.”
She made no reply; but her silence was not the silence of assent, and he knew it. He took one or two turns upon the terrace and then said—
“Why do you always try to take the heart out of me, Bride? I never speak with you, but it is always the same old story. You look like one of God’s angels from heaven; you talk like a veritable saint upon earth; and yet you stand there as it were opposed to every effort to raise and bless and benefit humanity—a champion for what is tyrannous and oppressive and hateful!”
It was not often that Eustace was carried away by his ardour in this fashion; but the excitement through which he had recently been passing had somewhat shaken and unnerved him. Bride looked away from him and out over the sea with one of those intense gazes of hers which calmed him better than any words could have done. He came up and took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his clasp.
“Forgive me,” he said; “I spoke like a brute. I did not know what I was saying. But, O Bride! why will not you and such as you help us? Why will you stand aloof with pitying scorn when the world and humanity are crying aloud for your sympathy and help?”
“Not scorn,” answered Bride gently, “not scorn; but pity—yes. I often do feel pity for you, Eustace, because I know that you will be so bitterly disappointed. You want to make men better and happier and more prosperous; and more prosperous you may make them by improved legislation. Many will be content when that is done, but you will not. Your aim goes higher. You want to see them raised out of their degradation—to see them ennobled and made truly better. And you will be so bitterly disappointed! I know you will; and I pity you often from the bottom of my heart; but indeed I do not scorn you. I know you—and—love you far too much for that.”
She spoke with quiet fearlessness, and used the word in an impersonal sense that Eustace could not misunderstand. He bent forward and lifted the hand he held to his lips, and she did not shrink away, for it was not the action of a lover, and she felt it and was not afraid. Nor was the salute in itself altogether obsolete in those days, though growing rarer and rarer.
“You shall teach me the knowledge in which I am lacking,” he said ardently; but she slightly shook her head.
“I am afraid not, Eustace; I am afraid the task would be too hard. You cannot see with my eyes, nor I with yours. You think all the way through that the end justifies the means. I hold that no lasting good can be, or ever has been done when unworthy and time-serving means have been employed. A man must be pure in heart before he can successfully fight the good fight against evil.”
“You mean that I must give up hoping to sit in Parliament?” said Eustace hotly, unable to help applying the doctrine to the matter most near his heart.