Chapter 6: The Gospel of Discontent

SAUL TRESITHNY was in a restless and disturbed frame of mind just now. He did not himself know what was creeping over him, but he had been for some time now experiencing a change of feeling, —a sense of weariness and disgust with his daily toil, with the people about him, with the world in general, that he had never felt before, and which perplexed him not a little.

A few weeks earlier, when this state had first assailed him, he believed it to be the outcome of his growing affection for Genefer, the farmer’s daughter, and thought, if he could but assure himself that his affection was returned, he should be himself once more; but in this conjecture he had not proved right. Genefer had admitted her preference for him; they held stolen interviews at all manner of times in and about the farm; she took care that his material comforts were greater than they had ever been before, and he could (if he chose) look forward to settling in life at no very distant date with a wife and home of his own. And yet he was not happy—he was more restless and discontented than ever in his life before.

Was it the monotony of farm labour that was the cause of this? Of course Saul and those about him had long known that he could do much better for himself if he wished. His grandfather had always told him that there was a home open to him in his comfortable cottage if he ever chose to avail himself of it, and that a wife of his would be warmly welcomed to make the home bright and cheerful for them both. He knew that the Duke would at any time give him employment in his stables, for Saul had a knack with horses that was well known all through the neighbourhood, and often caused him to be summoned to look at some refractory animal, and assist in the task of breaking him. Mr. St. Aubyn had more than once offered him the post of “odd man” at the rectory, where his one servant kept the flower garden and looked after the one stout cob which the Rector rode on his parish rounds, and had a comfortable little cottage at the gates for his home. But for some unexplained reason Saul had always declined these chances of bettering himself, and remained obstinately at his ill-paid farm work, greatly to the satisfaction of the farmer, who had never had so good an all-round man before, and who always treated Saul with consideration and affability, recognising qualities in him that he would have been loth to part with.

But perhaps no man of latent talent and energy is really content long together in a life that gives no scope for the exercise of his higher powers. Possibly it was merely this sense of constraint and uselessness which was at the bottom of Saul’s inexplicable and little understood depression. However that maybe, he had certainly taken to a mood of sullen brooding, which could hardly be dignified by the name of thought. He avoided his grandfather’s cottage on Sunday, preferring to work off his oppression by taking long walks across the cliffs; often finding himself in the little town of Pentreath before he was ready for a halt; and it was in this place that he first began to know and hear something of the questions of the day that were stirring in the great world around his humble home.

Newspapers never found their way to St. Bride’s, save to the castle; but Saul had formed the acquaintance of a cobbler in Pentreath, who was an ardent politician in his own way, and, with the natural and unexplained bias of his class, was a red-hot Radical to boot, and loved nothing so well as to inveigh with untrained and perfervid eloquence against the evils of the day—the oppression and misery of the poor, the tyranny and licentiousness, the cruelty and selfishness, of the rich. He prognosticated a day when there should be a general upheaval and turning of the tables, when every man should have his “rights,” and the tyrants of the earth should quake and tremble before their outraged slaves, as had been the case in France but a generation ago—the fearful story of which was well known to him, and over which he gloated with eager delight, even in its most ghastly details.

With this man we have no concern in these pages. He was one of that class of demagogues and agitators which was arising in England, and has flourished there to a greater or less extent ever since. Hundreds and thousands of these men were too obscure and too ignorant ever to make a name in the world, but they acted on the ignorant people about them as the leaven in the pan, and did much to bring about the state of general discontent and revolt which preceded the era of reform.

All through the month of January, when Saul would not spend his Sundays at the farm, on account of the visits of young Farmer Hewett, who was his especial aversion, he walked over to Pentreath and passed several hours with the cobbler, whose acquaintance he had made some time previously. At first the man’s talk had small interest for him, but he had a natural thirst for information; and great enthusiasm is like to kindle sparks in the minds of others, even when at first there seems small sympathy between them. Almost in spite of himself, Saul began to feel interested in the monologues and diatribes of the bright-eyed little artisan, and whether or no he agreed in his conclusions, he did come to have some notion of the state of the country at this time, the abuses which reigned there in many quarters, and the general sense amongst the people that something had got to be done to remedy this state of affairs—or they would know the reason why!

Thus it came about that when Saul first came into contact with Eustace Marchmont, he was not in that state of blank ignorance which was the usual attribute of the rustic of those parts, but had been instructed, although in a one-sided and imperfect way, upon the grievances of his class, and had, at least, been aroused to a sense that the world was all wrong, whether or not he was to have a hand in the setting of it to rights.

Eustace had seen Saul once or twice before he attempted to speak with him. His fine presence always attracted attention, and in his case the strong likeness to Abner gave him another mark of interest for those who knew the elder man. Eustace would have tried to get speech with him before, being impressed by the intelligence and character of the face, but had been somewhat deterred from the fact that he heard Abner had had the bringing up of the boy, and if so, he felt he might not find there the sort of soil he wanted. He liked a talk with the gardener at any time he could get him to engage in conversation, but the two never agreed in their conclusions. Both fully admitted the evils of the day and the need for reformation, but how that reformation was to be effected they never could agree; and although they parted friends, and had a warm esteem one for the other, Eustace secretly wished that Tresithny either knew a little more or a little less, and that his uncle did not possess a servant of such strong and peculiar views, and with so much influence in the place.

If Saul should prove to be a disciple of his grandfather’s, Eustace felt that it would be time wasted to seek to win him to his own view of the situation; whilst, on the other hand, if he could gain the young man as a convert to the new gospel, such a recruit would be a great power in his hand; for no one could look into Saul’s dark handsome face, and note the development of brow and head, without being certain that he possessed intelligence beyond the wont of his fellows, and force of character, which went farther in such a cause than keenness of wits.