IV

The miller did not shoot the rascal rats on Sundays; but habit led him one Sunday evening to take his place on the log by the stubble-rick. It was thus he became conscious that some other creatures besides rats were about, and stealthily shifting himself along the log till he could see round into the rickyard⁠—between the rick and an elder-bush⁠—he watched them without difficulty.

Mary Shaw and Abner Brown had made this retired spot their trysting-place. As a rule, people in the dusk of the evening rather avoided the neighbourhood of the deep and dangerous mill-pool. This suited them very nicely, and here they spent an hour or so on Sunday evenings in amorous converse.

Miller Bond did not interfere or spoil the game; in a rude sort of way he rather liked to see it, never having had experience in this line. Nor did he spy on them at all in the spy’s spirit; he looked occasionally, grinned, and said nothing to anyone.

There was scarce another man in his condition in the hamlet who would have been as kindly as this. Had anyone else discovered the lovers, there would have been some horseplay, some trick or other played upon them. The discreditable knaves who loiter about hamlets on Sundays, often make it their especial business to watch those who go off in couples, to track them secretly, and presently annoy them. It is difficult to imagine a practice more low.

Miller Bond chuckled and said nothing. He chuckled first at the loving passages, and secondly because Polly Shaw had rather the character of a prude⁠—not a common character in hamlets. Prude is not exactly the word; she was not a coquette then, and she bore a stainless reputation.

You might on a Sunday see Mary coming down the road, dressed in her best (and she dressed very well, having caught the idea of it from Felise), with her parasol in her hand, swinging it like a walking-stick, so that the tip just touched the grass at the side, tossing her proud little head disdainfully as the hamlet lads made loud remarks on her personal appearance.

A very pretty, plump, merry little girl she looked; the pink of neatness, with her laughing eyes and rosy cheeks, her hair so cleverly arranged, and a silver brooch⁠—real silver (Felise’s present)⁠—at her neck, and an air as much as to say, “I’m Mary Shaw; you may laugh, and I will laugh with you, but none of your coarse jests for me. Hands off!”

It had always been “hands off” with pretty Polly Shaw.

A hamlet girl of the cottage order has a rude ordeal to go through as she enters her teens, and few of them succeed in preserving their modesty, not to mention their reputation.

One harvest, not long before Mary entered service at Mr. Goring’s, she was tying up sheaves in the wheatfield, and happened to be quite alone. By-and-by Mr. Robert Godwin walked up, and without any preamble or preliminary courting made her a dishonourable proposal, at the same time holding out his hand on which glittered a silver sixpence. Always the miser.

Polly snatched up a reaping-hook that was lying near and cut at him; it was only by jumping aside that he escaped a fearful gash. He swore at and threatened her with the law for assault, but of course nothing came of it. He never spoke to her again, but he did not forget or forgive.

A rejected lover has the quickest of eyes, second only to those of a jealous woman; and long afterwards Robert Godwin was the only one who suspected Mary Shaw and Abner Brown. From that hour he determined the old couple should be turned out, in order to injure Mary’s prospects as much as possible. He knew there was no other cottage available for them in the hamlet: they could be married and go home there; but if that was shut to them, their future was gloomy and uncertain.

Shaw’s mother, when the girl told her of the incident in the wheatfield, severely rebuked her for being such a fool, and missing such a chance. Measter Godwin had heaps of money; she might never catch such a one as he again.

The mother, in fact, would gladly have sold her daughter. All she expressed indignation about was the sixpence.

These morals are born of generations of cruel poverty, and they are perpetuated by the brutal modern system which leaves for the worn-out labourer or labourer’s wife no refuge but the workhouse or the grave. Workhouse and grave lower in the distance all their lives, as a cloud lowers on the horizon. They snatch, therefore, at any means of present enjoyment⁠—drink, or worse; why not? They have no hereafter on earth; no age of ease and comfort. “Hang it, let’s take what us can!” is their maxim.

Some will say, I suppose, that I am painting Robert Godwin in too black colours, and that to be true to nature he ought to have one redeeming trait.

This is one of the special cants of the nineteenth century. A drunken blackguard navvy or low seaman stabs his woman, then he begs for a lock of her hair. An extraordinary brute⁠—extraordinary even among a collection of brutes⁠—the other day took up a heavy hammer and smashed his own children on their mother’s breast; but as some redeeming trait⁠—some redeeming cant⁠—was found in his character, he was reprieved from the gallows. A bank secretary steals thousands of pounds which people had deposited for safety; when he is in prison he begs that they will not confiscate his sister’s property. I fail to see anything redeeming in it; it seems to me the most infernal humbug.

Robert Godwin had no such redeeming trait, and to my idea that was the best thing about him⁠—he was no hypocrite. He was absolutely without any redeeming trait.

He was simply true to his nature. Nor was there anything exceptionally bad in his proffer to Mary Shaw; it in no degree stamped him as unusually evil; it was only what others do. Of course that makes it no better; still this is the real state of things. Such proffers are made every day of the year by the dozen to such poor girls, both by the rich and by those in their own rank of life. Mary herself had had five or six from various individuals. If you had explained to Robert Godwin that he had done a very wicked thing he would have been unfeignedly surprised, for he had never seen it in that light.

Mary was really a good girl, incapable of baseness. She was not to be bought or tempted; but she loved with all her heart, and she had a very warm, generous, affectionate heart. Big, broad-chested, loyal Abner and pretty Polly Shaw made in every way a desirable couple.

He was always in the garden, Polly was always running in and out; it was no wonder the flame was communicated to the tinder. Mr. Goring, full of his trees and his philosophies, never noticed it. Felise, dreaming of Martial, never noticed it; but the colourless eye of Robert Godwin⁠—the rejected⁠—saw it, and hated Abner.

After a time Miller Bond made another discovery while engaged with these rascal rats, and this was that a second individual occasionally met Mary Shaw in the rickyard by the mill-pool. Mary was frequently sent down into the hamlet; she had always the excuse of calling for a minute on her mother if she wished to run out after work was over, and Felise never said no. So she had plenty of opportunities.

Who this second man was, Bond did not know; he had so long been isolated at the mill that he knew scarcely any except those who lived in the hamlet, or sent their corn to be ground. It was a gentleman evidently⁠—a gentleman who whispered with Mary Shaw for a few minutes, and gave her silver money, and sometimes stole a kiss, Mary not making much resistance. Why should she? What’s in a kiss unseen?⁠—a gentleman, too.

Miller Bond said nothing, but was careful how he fired at the rats not to disturb this pretty little comedy in the rickyard.

It was Martial Barnard who met Mary Shaw in the rickyard, and his object was to learn beforehand the best opportunities of studying the Picture.

Martial had found it difficult to study the Picture because of Felise’s uncertain movements, so that he seldom knew where or when to waylay her. By making friends with Felise’s maid⁠—not a difficult task to a handsome young gentleman free with his silver⁠—he managed to discover what Felise was likely to do, and where she would probably walk on the following day; information which Mary extracted by sly questions from her unsuspecting mistress.

Mary was only too delighted to play her part in helping Felise to a lover. In her opinion so beautiful a young lady, and so kind and nice and unaffected, ought to have had several long before now. She was really happy in the idea that she was furthering her dear mistress’s interest, for of course she put down Martial as a lover; she could not have understood the fine divisions which Martial had drawn in his mind.

She only wondered why Martial, who was not at all shy with her, did not follow up his lady boldly and openly; that was her idea of making love, following up, and it was not a bad one.

Mary, however, was shrewd enough not to tell Martial of Felise’s morning visits to Robert Godwin’s, thinking that she might cause mischief; for Mary, who had hitherto believed her mistress heart-whole, could not at all understand these visits. Felise quite threw out her calculations by suddenly going into Maasbury (to the silversmith’s), and the result was that on that day Martial missed seeing the Picture, which was the cause of his lack of good-humour when Abner gave him the note about Ruy at his porch.