Godwin was ceaselessly on the alert to extend the authority of his employer. Footpaths were stopped, and odd corners of waste ground enclosed with stone walls costing thrice the value of the land, in order that no one might “squat” and presently assert a right to a few square yards of their own country.
These proceedings were by no means confined to the outlying agricultural places, where the well-to-do people were almost all tenants, and the remainder poor and without organization. Robert Godwin attacked the town with equal zest and equal success. The Cornleigh Cornleigh property included a considerable part of the town, and his “rights” extended more or less over the rest.
Except by long and costly legal process it was impossible to tell where those “rights” really began or ended. The steward made the fullest use of this uncertainty. Old byways and paths were blocked, corners enclosed, possession asserted and taken, and not a voice was raised. The whole town was straitened, and a band as it were drawn tight about it so that it could scarce breathe.
The park was closed, though the inhabitants had used it for a hundred years as a recreation ground, and had undoubted claims to roads across it. Not a voice was raised. Old inhabitants retained a respect for “the family,” and would not oppose its will. Tradespeople wished to enjoy its custom and patronage, though, as a matter of fact, they got neither, as “the family” bought all they required in London; still they did not like to shut the door in their own faces. There were not enough shoemakers in Maasbury.
Long since there had been a glove industry in the surrounding villages—an industry at which the poor folk worked in their own cottages. For the most part it had disappeared, yet to this day the magistrates could distinguish the hamlets where it had once flourished by the records in their books. To this day half the cases brought before them came from these hamlets.
Your artisan who works at home—your cottage glovemaker, or shoemaker—is a terrible radical, a fearful character, a frequenter of taverns, a fisticuff fellow, and above all things a contemner of authority. He will get into trouble for no other purpose than to show his despite of authority. His descendants had it in their blood, and still continued to exhibit the same disposition. But the industry had died out, and there were no shoemakers to speak of in Maasbury town. Consequently Mr. Godwin ruled as he chose.
The result was that the property was trimmed, walled, enclosed, and improved in every possible manner. Had it been set out to sale, the auctioneer could have honestly laid stress on the singular completeness of the estate. It was in perfect order. The “family” reaped that advantage.
A breathless hatred of Robert Godwin prevailed from north to south, east to west, of that broad stretch of land. From the tenant of a thousand acres, and the wealthy tradesman (like Rosa’s father) down to the miserable old woman in her shanty, living on tea and soaked bread, the hatred of Robert Godwin was universal.
The well-to-do exhibited this feeling by asking him to every entertainment they gave—invitations seldom accepted, for Godwin was a solitary man—by publicly praising him at every meeting, by treating him with the greatest respect, and by holding their tongues in private. No one ever abused Robert Godwin.
Even the old women did not curse him, as they do in storybooks, for they have come to learn—these old women—in the nineteenth century that curses are as harmless as thistledown. They looked after him as he passed—simply folded their arms and looked after him.
His mind, hard set upon the subject in hand, was clear and practical, consequently upon agricultural topics, and such as came within his reach, Godwin could make a good speech. He frequently spoke, expressing himself in plain and forcible language; his speeches appeared in full in the local prints, and were even transferred to the London agricultural papers. He possessed a considerable reputation of this kind, and justly so, for he spoke out of the fullness of practical knowledge.
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
