XIV

If our old habits are suspended, how rapidly the touch of living hands disappears from our inanimate surroundings. Almost the instant the living hand is withdrawn, dust settles on the furniture and the room.

Dust thickens in the ink; the pen corrodes; papers become gritty; the moisture of the air or the heat of the sun curls photographs; desolation dwells in every nook and corner.

The smooth surface of the polished table is strewn with the fine particles deposited by the atmosphere; it is sown with dust. Time so soon asserts his reign. But a day or two is sufficient; the flowers left in the vase wither, and the air becomes dull and lifeless let but the door be closed for three days.

When I return to my chamber and find it thus, I hasten to push the books aslant from the positions in which they have been lying, to upset some of the papers and give them a new aspect, to flick the dust from the table, to open the window. The change is instant; immediately the chairs appear comfortable, and the room a habitation for the living. Yet it is sorrowful to reflect how soon⁠—but a day or two⁠—and already the dust has gathered over the place we filled.

Robert Godwin was sitting at his desk in his bedroom⁠—his desk you will remember was the washstand, and stood by the narrow window. Half the embrasure of the window⁠—deep in the thick wall⁠—was lit by the slant rays of the evening sun. Cobwebs had grown in the corner of the casement, and stretched out over the piles of papers.

They were gritty with dust; they had not been touched lately. Dust was thickening the ink; the pen was corroding; fragments of a torn-up envelope lay on the floor. He sat there, but the desk and the window were full of desolation. Old habits were suspended; the touch of the living hand was withdrawn. The pen was not dipped in the ink, the papers remained unmoved, and dust collected in the folds, and spiders spun threads about them.

He sat with his left arm on the washstand in such a position that he could see what was doing in the garden underneath. He was watching Felise and Martial, whom he had himself set there to be watched.

The slow sun scarcely moved in the western sky, and the lines of shade cast by the bars of the casement dragged upwards. Flies buzzed against the pane⁠—buzzed and crawled and buzzed again⁠—the only sound in the still room.

Fixed and intent upon the pair in the shade of the grey poplar-tree, Robert Godwin sat and watched and watched, and held this thing up close and closer to his mind to see and understand it.

He had worked it out in this way: so soon as Felise had purchased Ruy she ceased to walk over; that was reasonable enough, because there was nothing to attract her. But what had become of the horse? She did not ride him, and Godwin could not hear that it was at Mr. Goring’s. There were plenty to bring him information, for although they hated him they hastened to serve his will.

This is man. Not man as he would be if his aspirations were encouraged instead of being beaten out of him, but man as he exists on sufferance, the slave-man. His meanest and basest parts are encouraged, his servility rewarded, his treachery accounted a merit. This is the slave-man.

No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day.

Godwin had mean tools enough ready to serve him with hand or tongue; yet he never paid them. They received no reward, to serve him was its own reward⁠—to such a depth of degradation does the slave-man descend.

These miserable village wretches, from whom this despot took away the spring, from whom he had tried to take their common, over whom he had domineered so long, were only too proud and glad if they could do him some mean service. He paid his labourers the lowest of all the farmers, yet he never wanted for ploughman or carter. They would work for him sixpence cheaper than for any other, and overtime for nothing; they would submit to be driven and hectored; they clung to his employment as a glad thing.

The meanness of man⁠—slave-man⁠—is inexpressible. Some, I verily believe, delight to be slave-men; it is a joy to them, and they would not change their condition; not only miserable village wretches, but men in good position, well-to-do sycophants.

Godwin had but to ask once if Ruy was at Mr. Goring’s, and several tongues informed him that the horse had never been there.

Three or four days afterwards he met Martial on Ruy. Neither of them said anything about the horse⁠—Martial, because he knew the man well, and that he would not give him any information; Robert, for several reasons.

With the clue in his hands, and behind the scenes, Godwin easily understood how Ruy had passed back into Martial’s possession.

Felise had bought the horse to give him to her lover.

She had come over morning after morning to feed the bay with apples because she loved his original owner. She stroked his neck⁠—it was as if she had stroked Martial’s head; she spoke to him gently as if she caressed her lover; she walked beside him, and reluctantly left him at the stall.

She was poor, yet she had got seventy pounds together to return her lover his favourite.

This thing then had been in her mind that sleepless night when he delved by the lantern, when after nine years hope began to shine like a sunrise upon him.

This was in her mind as she stood at his side, when he felt the touch of her dress, and inhaled the sweetness of her breath. While the sunrise of hope shone upon him, her heart was given to another; given, too, in the boldest, the most open manner⁠—a manner at which the world would make mock and mouthing as beyond a modest affection.

The lash was laid upon his naked heart; it cut deeply, but he made no sign.

It would have been easy for him to set mischief afoot; he had no doubt Felise had kept her uncle in ignorance of what she had done. But he said nothing; he watched and waited.

He held a secret with Felise; this was a strong position. In a measure she was in his power.

He would not play into her hands and let another man⁠—let Martial know that she had done this for love of him.

Would any woman now have let another woman know that a man had in secret gone to some great length for her?

The solace of his hands was lost; no occupation could numb the biting of the sharp pain within. From his workmen he suddenly snatched their tools, and beat his heart as it were against solid stone and timber. From the stone-breaker in the yard he seized his hammer and broke the very stones⁠—the hard flints⁠—shattering them as if the blow destroyed the nerve. He used the saw and the axe; he stooped and put his shoulder to the heavy beams and trunks of timber; with vehement energy he strove to overcome.

There were always works in progress upon the estate; he visited them, and threw his body against the weight and inertia of dull matter. It availed nothing; the pain was not to be beaten out.

One thing only he could not do now⁠—he could not write. The pen was laid aside, and the dust thickened in the ink, and rendered the papers gritty.

The carpenter can plane and hammer, and the mason can use his trowel; the blacksmith can swing his sledge and whistle at his bellows; the ploughman can follow his plough though the load of sorrow be at his heart, and the grief, never to be wholly healed, remain open. But to write⁠—who can write? The spectre rises between the mind and the paper; letters may be traced, but meaning flies before it can be transcribed.

There is no labour so heavy as writing when the heart is cruelly hurt.

He could not do it; nothing else was neglected, but letters accumulated and piles of accounts lay as they were thrown in the ledge of the window.

So long as he had Felise to himself, so long he had endured. For, in a sense, he had had her to himself.

Dwelling upon her the whole day through, and day after day, month after month, for nine years, she had come to be his own. Bitter as his thought was, he had poured it all out upon her⁠—he had surrounded her with his feelings; she was unconscious of it, but it was the same to him as if she had known. Round her he had thrown a circle of his bitterness⁠—an invisible ring; enclosed in that circle she was inaccessible to him, but no one else had her.

She no longer walked alone.

Upon a ledge high up an inaccessible cliff there was a great treasure of gold. A man saw it⁠—it was his discovery; but he was not strong enough to climb to it. He passed beneath every day and looked at it. In time another man came, stronger or cleverer than he, who climbed up and seized the treasure.

Robert Godwin had discovered this woman in her girlhood. He could not obtain her; he had watched her growth; then came another and bore her away.

The cruelty to Rosa of Felise’s existence was surpassed by the cruelty to Godwin of Martial’s existence. Godwin had done him no wrong; he received this terrible blow.

As Felise had been to Rosa, so was Martial to Godwin. The dramatist renders all his characters happy; human life leaves half at least in sorrow.

There was no solace in his hands, nor in riding to and fro, nor in aught that he could do. His candle burned through the night, for he could not sleep; but he did not seek to pass the hours in working with his hands. The hours passed; that was all.