XXI

Since Robert Godwin could not by the effort of a lifetime have summoned up sufficient imagination to tell his own story, I must do the romance for him, and explain why he could not sleep that night. You now know the man, who could rout about dusty lumber that his hands might be employed, who could not see the sky. Here is his romance.

Nine years ago, that very time of the year, Robert Godwin, starting forth into the fields one day, saw a trespasser in a meadow of mowing-grass. A trespasser rolling about in the sacred mowing-grass, wilfully damaging it⁠—with the aid of a dog, too.

To walk among mowing-grass is a guilty thing, you must understand, in country places. This meadow in particular did not concern Godwin, but the fact of trespassing did; he could not have passed a trespasser without ordering the criminal off any more than a dog could pass a bone. He walked rapidly towards the place, full of hard language, bitter words and threats, swelling with eagerness to drive this daring human being. As he came near he was astounded at the absolute abandon of the youthful sinner; she not only trespassed, she revelled in her wickedness.

It was a girl about ten or eleven, tall for her age, and with her a great spaniel; together they were making themselves joyful in the flower-strewn grass.

Sometimes she ran, and leaped, and danced in the beautiful sweet grass which rose above her knees. Sometimes she threw herself at full length in it, lying down on the breast of the earth, as a swimmer lies on the breast of the sea. As children dance and play without much covering on the sands in their innocence, so in her wild gambols her short frock permitted the shape of her limbs to be occasionally seen.

Her hands were full of clover-blossoms; she threw them away and gathered the large daisies; she scattered the daisies and took buttercups and blue veronica; she laughed and whistled⁠—quite a real whistle⁠—she caught her foot and tumbled, and shouted. The spaniel charged her as she lay extended, charged over her and rolled her down again. Together they romped, utterly unaware of the Terror that was approaching them with swift strides.

Her long golden hair, one mass of ringlets, was spread about upon the grass, as she lay on her back⁠—the spaniel had his heavy paws on her chest⁠—one knee was raised among the golden buttercups, and the sun shone on its exquisite whiteness. She was panting and laughing, almost unable to move from the weight of the spaniel and her own exhaustion.

The Terror was very near⁠—the Terror could easily have captured her; but now a singular incident occurred.

At a distance of ten short paces Robert Godwin stopped, looked fixedly, suddenly turned on his heel, and returned the way he had come without a word.

Almost directly his back was turned the spaniel saw him, and began to bark; and the girl sat up and began instinctively to arrange her frock, and get her hair in order. But Robert Godwin did not look back.

The child was Felise Goring, then but recently arrived at her uncle’s upon the loss of her father, whom she could not regret because she had never known him⁠—he had been in India so long. She remembered the grass⁠—just remembered it⁠—about the house she had lived in when she first began to walk. She came to it again from the streets and confinement of a London suburb.

Imagine the child’s delight⁠—the fields to roam in⁠—liberty⁠—the great dog; all the happy sunny freedom children enjoy in the country. No matter how kind their parents may be, no matter how fortunate their circumstances, the children in cities never know the joyousness of the country.

The grass to walk on; the flowers to gather; the horses to watch; the new milk; the delicious butter; the brook to ramble by; the pond to fish in; the hay to throw about; the very ladders to climb; and the thick hedges to get in as if they were woods. No gold can purchase these things in cities. They are to be pitied whose youth has been spent in streets, though they may succeed to the countinghouse where millions are made.

All of you with little children, and who have no need to count expense, or even if you have such need, take them somehow into the country among green grass and yellow wheat⁠—among trees⁠—by hills and streams, if you wish their highest education, that of the heart and the soul, to be completed.

Therein shall they find a Secret⁠—a knowledge not to be written, not to be found in books. They shall know the sun and the wind, the running water, and the breast of the broad earth. Under the green spray, among the hazel boughs where the nightingale sings, they shall find a Secret, a feeling, a sense that fills the heart with an emotion never to be forgotten. They will forget their books⁠—they will never forget the grassy fields.

If you wish your children to think deep things⁠—to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows.

It is of no use to palter with your conscience and say, “They have everything; they have expensive toys, storybooks without end; we never go anywhere without bringing them home something to amuse them; they have been to the seaside, and actually to Paris; it is absurd, they cannot want anything more.”

But they do want something more, without which all this expensive spoiling is quite thrown away. They want the unconscious teaching of the country, and without that they will never know the truths of this life. They need to feel⁠—unconsciously⁠—the influence of the air that blows, sun-sweetened, over fragrant hay; to feel the influence of deep shady woods, mile-deep in boughs⁠—the stream⁠—the high hills; they need to revel in long grass. Put away their books, and give them the freedom of the meadows. Do it at any cost or trouble to yourselves, if you wish them to become great men and noble women.

Indulgent to all, Mr. Goring was necessarily yet more indulgent to this great beautiful girl suddenly thrown on his hands. For she was beautiful already, although with that unshapen, uncertain irregularity which promises better in childhood than regularity. If a girls features are regular as a child, if already lovely, it is rare for her to be a beautiful woman. Neither the face nor the form must be finished too soon.

Felise’s face suggested, her form already hinted at, loveliness to come when the bold first strokes of Nature were filled in.

To recognise such strokes of Nature in their inception, and to observe their relation to each other and to the general shape, is a pleasure of the most exquisite kind. If the growth and unfolding of a flower be beautiful, how much more so the growth of a woman!

Robert Godwin’s thought from that hour never varied from the child whom he had intended to have driven with harsh reviling from the meadow. I do not say that he loved her from the moment he saw her; he had no imagination. His heart was not prepared with fancy and ready to love; but his thought dwelt upon her, and love steadily grew within him.

So intensely concentrated a nature could not love by halves⁠—could not admire, or sigh, and pass on and amuse itself elsewhere. Once set, the plant grew and filled his whole life. It came about in time that Robert Godwin never thought of anything else but Felise Goring.

While his hands worked, as you have seen them; while his lips uttered hard words, or while his mind added figure to figure at his washstand-desk, Felise filled his entire inner existence. He lived in a dream, this dreamless man; he was absorbed in one idea⁠—an idea so fixed that his mind was vacant. His hands moved with no consciousness behind them, as the wheels of a machine go round.

Work over, he slept at once without any interval of love-like reverie; for he carried Felise instantly with him into his slumber, so fixed was her image in his mind. His abstraction was complete. The form of Robert Godwin walked among the fields, and rode along the roads; the lips of Robert Godwin gave forth articulate sound; the signature of Robert Godwin was traced upon the cheque⁠—but Robert Godwin, the personality, was not there. His mind was with Felise.

It is said that women above all things like to be loved. Very rarely is a woman loved as Godwin loved, such utter abstraction, such loss of self-existence, such death of self-existence. The woman that he loved should have been happy. But in Paris they say, that woman is indeed happy to be loved, but only when the lover can minister to her vanity.

Robert Godwin had no knowledge whatever of such studies of woman’s heart, some base and worthless, some true; yet his clearness of intellect (consequent upon the shortness of his view, not its breadth; he held everything, as it were, close to his mind, as people with dim sight hold all things close to their eyes)⁠—his clearness of intellect instinctively told him that Felise was not for him; he could never be anything to her.

The Parisian would put it in this way: He comprehended that there was nothing about him that could flatter or excite her vanity.

He loved her and gave her up at the same time. He loved her more and more as the years drew on, and year by year he acknowledged to himself that the gulf between them grew more and more impassable.

At that moment in the meadow he was already forty; she was ten or eleven. Yet it was not the difference of age; it was the total, worldwide difference of personality.

Now he was forty-nine, Felise nineteen⁠—nearly twenty. Nine great wedges had been driven in by Time to split their lives asunder.

Upright, strong, without one grey fleck in his dark hair, Godwin had not altered an atom in those nine years. He was as vigorous, as full of manhood as at twenty-one. But still he was forty-nine; he was on the verge of fifty.

Can you imagine a woman in solitude weighing these words on her lips, “He is on the verge of fifty”?

Yet it was not the years; it was the total, the worldwide difference of personality. Godwin, all these nine years, had held the matter up close to his mind, and every day the certainty grew more certain, the fact more palpable, that she was not for him. By no possible manner of means could Felise ever come to care for Robert Godwin.

In all that time scarcely a day went by that he did not see her. The two houses were hardly half a mile apart; the girl was in the fields constantly, and he was always riding or walking across them. He never purposely approached her, but his path frequently brought him near; sometimes they met. Her existence was always before his eyes.