Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Every one had changed—the whole world—the very cause itself. All had left him in his hour of need—all had turned upon him and betrayed and deserted him. Months of solitary brooding, the delirium of fever, the overwrought nervous condition into which imprisonment had driven him, had all combined to produce in Saul a distorted image of life, of the world, and of every single being in it. Hitherto he had locked these feelings in his own heart; but now, before Eustace, the one man who had proffered him friendship in the midst of his trouble, the friendship of comrade to comrade, man to man, it all came pouring out in one great flood of impassioned eloquence and imprecation, terrible sometimes to listen to. It was not easy at times even to follow his rapid speech, which alternated between the roughest vernacular and the purest English he had ever spoken, rehearsed a hundred times in his prison-house, as he had prepared the speeches which were to raise all Devon and Cornwall to arms, if need be, against the monstrous class tyranny under which the country lay groaning. Eustace let him have his fling, never stopping him by argument or opposition, leading him on by a sympathetic word now and again to outpour everything that was in his heart without fear. He knew by instinct what the relief would be, how much good it would do for the outlet to be found at length; and though unable to repress a sense of shuddering loathing at some of the words of his companion, he could well excuse them in the thought of his great sufferings and state of mental distraction, and was very hopeful by slow degrees of winning him back to a better and more reasonable frame of mind.

It was much to have gained his confidence—much that Saul was able to depend on the sympathy of his former master, and was not afraid of baring his inmost soul before him. Eustace was seized sometimes with a sense of something like dismay to find how absolutely Saul believed he would echo even the most blasphemous of his thoughts, how securely he reckoned upon finding in his leader the same absolute denial of all revealed religion—religion which he himself fiercely decried and ridiculed, as part and parcel of a corrupt system soon to be exploded. Much that the young man thus hotly declaimed against—much of his wild and random vituperation must have been learned from others. Eustace could honestly affirm he had never allowed such expressions to pass his lips; but here and there a phrase of his own would mingle with the wilder words of Saul, and half startle Eustace by the method of its application. Also he could not help recognising, as this man poured out his soul before him by the shore that day, that his own standpoint had very slightly and insensibly changed from those days, more than a year back now, when he had first sought to awaken in Saul a response to his own ardent imaginings. What the change was he could scarcely define, but he was aware that arguments and assertions which would then have passed by as only slight exaggerations of a legitimate truth, now came to him with something of a shock, bringing a realisation of some unheeded change or development in himself which had silently leavened during the past months, till it had attained a proportion he never suspected.

Rousing himself with a start from the train of thought thus suggested, he tried to bring his companion back to the world of real things, and to leave these idle denunciations and invectives alone for the present. When Saul had about tired himself with his own impetuosity, and had kept silence for a few moments, Eustace spoke a few well-chosen words of sympathy, and gradually bringing round the subject of the forthcoming election, he explained to the ex-prisoner what had been going on in the world during his incarceration, and what bright hopes were now entertained in this country of better days in store for it, when a strong Government, pledged to redress the gravest of political abuses, should be in power.

Saul was not entirely ignorant of what had passed, but had very distorted ideas as to the amount and character of the opposition offered to the bill and the prospects of its speedy success. He listened eagerly to what Eustace told him, and his remarks and questions again struck his master as showing a quickness of insight and a power of appreciation most remarkable in one of his class. He was a more excitable, a more sombre, a more embittered man than he had been a year before. His class hatred had sunk deeper into his soul, and become a more integral part of his nature. Eustace recognised how the humiliation, if not the destruction, of the moneyed classes was to him almost more of an object than the redress of the grievances of the poor. The two were linked together in his mind, it was true; but it was easy to see which of them held the foremost place. Eustace realised, as perhaps he had never done so well before, the temper of the French revolutionaries of forty years back. He could well picture Saul in their midst, and think with a shudder of the deeds he would commit at the head of a furious mob, wrought up to a pitch of ungovernable fury by the rude eloquence of such a leader. Perhaps he realised, too, what might come to England if her sons were stirred up to a like madness, instead of being worked upon by gentler methods. He well knew that there had been moments when his own country had been on the brink of revolution, and that such moments might even come again. Surely it was needful for the men who stood in the forefront of the van of reform to walk warily. They had an immense power behind them; but it was, as Abner had said, the power of an explosive whose properties and whose energies were but imperfectly understood. Reform may be the best hindrance to revolution, but it may also incite the very danger it strives to avert. Eustace had been told this a hundred times before, but he had never been so convinced of the truth of the warning as he was whilst walking on the shore that day in the company of Saul.

He suggested taking him away from St. Bride, and showing him the other side of life in the great centres of the world; but Saul, though visibly attracted by the thought of continuing near to Eustace, for whom his love and admiration were most loyal, gave no decided answer. He shrank from the confinement even of freedom in a great city, shrank from even such slight bondage as service under such a master as this would entail. Moreover, there was no need for a speedy decision. Eustace would be some weeks at the castle; he would probably remain there till the result of the election was known. It would be time enough to settle then what should be done. For the present, Saul would remain unfettered and untrammelled.

“For I must be in Pentreath if there is to be an election,” he said, the light of battle leaping into his eyes. He remembered elections in past times, and the attendant excitement and fighting and fun, as in those days it seemed to him. He was no politician then, and had only the vaguest notion as to what it was all about; but he was always foremost in the crowd about the hustings, cheering, howling, flinging missiles, according to the spirit of the moment and the wave of public opinion, which would ebb and rise and change a dozen different times in as many hours. He had always been instinctively the enemy of the Tory and the supporter of the Whig candidate, because he had always taken on every matter the contrary opinion of the Castle—almost as a matter of religion. Otherwise he could not be said to have had an opinion heretofore in such things. But the excitement, the indiscriminate treating, the rowdyism of the whole place, and the fights and scrimmages that were constantly arising, were like the elixir of life to the ardent temperament of one who was forced by circumstances into a life of monotonous toil. He always obtained a few days’ holiday on such occasions, and spent them in a fashion dear to his heart. Now he looked forward to a longer spell of excitement, and to struggles of a very different kind. Then it had all been fun, now it would be stern earnest with him. There was a fierce light of battle in his eyes. The hope sprang up again in his heart of striking a blow for the cause. Eustace saw the look, heard the half hissed words of joy and anticipation, and smilingly laid a hand on the young fisherman’s arm.

“Yes, I think you will do well to be there. You are one of those who may do us good, and help on the cause of right and liberty; but not by violence, Saul—always remember that. Violence is not our friend, but our most deadly foe. It puts a sword in the hands of our enemies to slay us withal. There must be no unseemly violence at the Pentreath election—remember that. We must give our opponents no reason to say that the cause of reform is advocated by cowardly and unworthy means. Leave all that sort of thing to our foes. Let them get up as many riots as they please. Our part is to be just and wise and patient, secure in the righteousness and justice of our object. You will find we shall come out in a far stronger position by remembering this than if we organise disturbances and lead angry mobs to deeds of reckless lawlessness.”

Saul made no response; Eustace was not even sure that he heard. His eyes were flashing, his nostrils working; he clenched and unclenched his hand in a fashion indicative of strong excitement.

Eustace judged it wiser to say no more for the present. There would be plenty of time before the elections came off to gain an increasing ascendency over this wild spirit. His first beginning had been by no means bad.

Yet Eustace, as he walked homewards silently with Bride, could hardly help smiling at the thought of the part he should be forced to play with Saul. That there were stirring days coming upon the country he could not doubt, and he meant to take his part in them with a will; but he realised that, with Saul watching his every movement, and pledged to follow him to the utmost limit to which his own arguments could be pushed, he should be forced to weigh his words, and direct his actions with a greater prudence end moderation than he had originally purposed. Perhaps it might be well for him to have this reminder well before his eyes, but he could not but smile at the peculiar result which had been brought about by his own endeavour to work some sort of small agitation amongst the people at St. Bride’s, St. Erme, and Penarvon.