XX

Except I describe Robert Godwin’s works and that which he did, it is impossible to describe him. For he was not a thinker, a dreamer, a man of feeling; there was no light and shade in his character. To understand him you must know not what he felt, but what he did. Now these were the works of Robert Godwin.

I do not think that he intended to be harsh in his dealings with his fellows. It was simply an absolute want of imagination. He was no set villain of a piece, no unscrupulous tyrant for the sake of evil. There was no cruelty in his nature. No one ever saw him thrash his horse mercilessly, or kick his dog.

Of the suffering to human beings caused by his conduct, he was entirely oblivious, nor could you by any possible method have explained it to him. He lacked the imagination to put himself in the place of the wretched.

It was this faculty which enabled the torturers in the Middle Ages to tear human creatures limb from limb, to thrust red-hot iron into the victim, to smash every bone on the wheel, to carry out orders of so ghastly a character that not even the sober historian in our time dares to record them on his page. They remain in Latin⁠—as it were whispered in ancient books.

In our day this faculty is by no means extinct: twelve hundred men announced themselves possessed of it when they applied for the hangman’s office.

I call it a faculty, for really it seems so, instead of the lack of a faculty; just as cold⁠—frost⁠—seems to one’s feelings a real thing, and not merely the absence of heat.

Robert Godwin had not the least idea of the misery he often caused, simply because he possessed the faculty of not seeing⁠—the faculty of no imagination. That he seemed in most cases devoid of rancour was often remarked; after quarrelling most furiously, he would shake hands next day as if nothing had happened. But then there was nothing in his goodwill⁠—he had no goodwill.

He was absolutely honest, except in a horse-deal, in which it is mutually understood that every man shall cheat his neighbour. His mere nod was his bond. The word of Robert Godwin was like the signed and sealed bond of a great railway company⁠—negotiable; his word was negotiable. That is, if a man said Godwin had promised, you dealt on the faith of that bare word.

This much said, last of all, Robert Godwin was no hypocrite. He made no profession of Christian charity; he never entered a church. Not that he was an opponent of the Church; he was simply indifferent.

No one ever got touch of Robert Godwin. The man was always alone. While he measured a tree with the woodman standing by; while he rated the ploughman; while he bargained in the market, hustled and shoved by the crowd; while he spoke in public; if you sat with him in his house, still Robert Godwin was apart, separate, a distinct personality. His spirit never blended with the society about him.

His sister had lived with him as housekeeper year after year, and she knew no more of him than a stranger. He made no mystery of anything, yet he was impenetrable. She had inherited the Godwin faculty of no imagination; her mind, once the household duties over, fell at once into vacancy. She sat still and grew immensely fat.

The reason of Godwin’s intense personality was his concentration. He was fixed, absorbed in himself; he neither saw nor heard anything. He was conscious of himself only. The curving outline of the hills, the white clouds, the sunset, were invisible to him.

Riding away on his new horse Ruy from Mr. Goring’s porch that lovely summer day, Robert Godwin went straight into the town, executed some business there, returned home, put up his horse, and at once walked out into the fields to his men. He never stayed his hand till night; when the last labourers had gone slowly homewards, he was still doing something.

But even the long, long summer evening⁠—Felise passed it sitting by the sundial dreaming⁠—the long summer evening went away at last. Dusky shadows crept out and filled the corners of the fields; the orchards became gloomy; the large bats flew to and fro in the upper air; the lesser bats fluttered round the eaves.

Robert Godwin took his candle up into his bedroom, which was at the same time his study or private office. Probably in his grim father’s time it was the only room in which he could find any peace, and the habit of working there having once been established could not be set aside. The washstand was placed by a small window⁠—a window deep in the embrasure necessitated by a thick old wall. Upon one end of this washstand Robert wrote; it was a large stand intended for two ewers, but only one stood on it, cobwebbed, for it was never used.

At the end of the washstand next the window Robert had his ink, his pens, and blotting-paper; his letters, documents, and papers were on the window-ledge, piles of them which could be seen from the garden beneath. Here he worked every evening, in solitude, by the light of one cheap candle.

This evening Robert worked later than usual, till his sister, weary of waiting, had her supper, and presently retired. By-and-by the last letter was finished, the last account added up, the last note jotted down; there was no more writing to be done. He took his letters out to the gate by the road, where he had a private box cleared by the mail-cart driver who passed about midnight.

Next he went round to the other gate in the garden to see if it was locked. From thence he visited the stables, and heard Ruy move in his stall; and then round the rickyard to see if any wandering vagabond dared to creep under a rick to sleep. As he passed the pump in the yard he tried it, to see if it acted properly; his hands could let nothing alone. Finally, he crossed his arms on the top bar of the gate leading into the meadows, and looked straight out across the fields.

Something, perhaps a hare, rushed away; he did not regard it in the least. The dog in the kennel yawned, shook himself, and looked out at his master, who never stroked him.

Dew was falling thickly, and in the distance a thin white vapour marked the course of the stream. The still trees, heavily laden with their foliage, were silent; there was not the faintest rustle, and nothing appeared to move in their shadows. Once a bird, perhaps a whitethroat, chattered a little in the hedge; but his voice sank quickly. In the warm stillness of the summer night there came a far-off rushing sound, very faint; it was the cascade, at the trout-pool where Felise bathed.

Above, the clear sky was full of stars, and among them the beautiful planet Jupiter shone serene. The sky was of a lovely night-blue; it was an hour to think, to dream, to revere, to love⁠—a time when, if ever it will, the soul reigns, and the coarse rude acts of day are forgotten in the aspirations of the inmost mind.

The Night was calm⁠—still; it was in no haste to do anything⁠—it had nothing it needed to do. To be is enough for the stars.

Robert did not notice any difference in the night; he had seen hundreds of nights. He was listening for the roll of the mail-cart wheels. After a time they came; the cart stopped; the driver collected the letters, and went on. There was no delivery by this mail, only a collection.

Robert returned to his bedroom, took off his coat, looked at his bed, and put on his coat again. He did not care to lie down. He lighted a great stable-lantern, and went out of doors again.

The hasp of the gate against which he had leaned was a little shaky and loose; he found the tools, went to work, and put it to rights. Then he went into the orchard to the garden-house, and examined the gardener’s tools, one by one, to see if they had been roughly used, or injured; if so, the man must pay. The man had been digging; with the lantern in his hand Robert paced the distance dug to see how many yards he had completed.

Robert went to the stable, looked in at Ruy, climbed up into the tallet, and spied about to see if any forage had been stolen. He examined the carter’s collection of horsehair⁠—his perquisite⁠—to see if it was accumulating too fast.

He brought out a stool and saw, and sawed up firewood till he had made a goodly heap. He would have done more, but that would encourage waste. If only a little was cut up, only a little would be used.

He planed a piece of timber intended for the head of a gate. He counted the poles aslant against the woodpile. Nothing else remaining that he could do, he returned to the garden, took off his coat, set the lantern on the grass, and dug where the gardener had left off. While he dug the night went on⁠—the night that was in no haste to do anything; and by degrees a pale light grew up above the eastern horizon. The dawn comes early in summer.

Still Robert dug steadily on till the other mail-cart⁠—the down mail⁠—approached. He stopped and listened; the driver did not pull up, so there were no letters. Robert scraped his boots, put away the spade, blew out the lantern, and went indoors.

By the pale white light he looked again at his bed; but he could not lie down. There was no rest in him that night. He lit his cheap candle and went up into the attic overhead, where he had not been for years. The shutters were perpetually closed up there, so that the place was partly dark, although streaks of dawn came through the chinks. The great bare room was full of ancient lumber.

He set the candle on an oak press and fell to work, sorting the confused mass which strewed the floor. Old chairs⁠—some broken, some perfect⁠—a picture or two, hair-trunks, books, bundles of newspapers, pieces of chain⁠—odd lengths thrown aside⁠—nameless odds and ends, such as candlesticks, parts of implements, the waste of a century, all covered with dust, and dead black cobwebs. Dead cobwebs thick with dust, not the fine clean threads the spider has in use; webs which had been abandoned fifty years ago.

The skeleton of a bird lay at the bottom of a hollow in the pile, perhaps an injured swallow that had crept in there to die. A pair of flintlock pistols, the flints still in the hammers, were in very good condition, scarcely rusted; Robert snicked the locks and examined them carefully. He was black with dust and cobwebs.

Chairs and furniture he threw on one side, boxes on another, papers and books in a corner, and soon began to make order of confusion.

The light of morning came stronger through the chinks; the flame of the candle appeared yellow. The alchemy of light was changing the sky without.

He worked on till footsteps sounded on the paths outside, the carters had come to see to the horses. There was someone at last to drive.

Robert went downstairs, and out to the pump; there he washed himself in the open air, as he had been made to do years and years ago in his stern old father’s time. The habit adhered still; the man was indeed all habit. Then he visited the stables, and began to drive the carters; the night was over, the day had begun.

Overhead and eastwards there shone a glory of blue heaven, illuminated from within with golden light. The deep rich azure was lit up with an inner gold; it was a time to worship, to lift up the heart. Is there anything so wondrously beautiful as the sky just before the sun rises in summer?

There was a sound of carthorses stamping heavily, the rattle and creak of harness, the shuffle of feet; a man came out with a set forehead, grumbling and muttering; the driver was at work.

No one heeded the alchemy proceeding in the east, which drew forth gold and made it shine in the purple.