ALTHOUGH the Pig-driver, as he sat in his cart at Llangarth Fair, was mainly concerned with the prospective beef, mutton, and pork collected before him, he found time to notice other things. One of these was George Williams, steering his way through the crowd with Mary Vaughan’s arm in his.
He looked after them as they passed, all unconscious of his eyes, and, when they were lost in the mass of human beings and had disappeared from the range of his vision, he still remained in so pre-occupied a state that his bargains were in danger of suffering.
It was evident that his former dependent “had a young woman”; a result, no doubt, of his prosperity at Great Masterhouse; perhaps he would soon be setting up a home of his own, perhaps he was even buying things at the fair for his wedding.
For years James Bumpett had known no shame, but the nearest approach to it assailed him as he saw Williams, well-dressed, happy, and evidently with his private affairs on hand, a living witness to the limits of his own power.
The thought hit him in a spot in which most of us are vulnerable. People who love power may be sublime, to others as well as to themselves, so long as they are able to get it; when they are not, they become ridiculous, principally to others. His business done, he drove away, plunged in his own thoughts. How he wished that the high-and-mighty mistress of Great Masterhouse had been in the fair to see her favourite servant walking about with the girl who had led her only son astray. Not that the Pig-driver thought much of such deviations from the straight path as Rhys had made, but he knew that Mrs. Walters did. The idea of her at a fair was so impossible that he smiled at his own futility; but she should know of it, and the next time he met Nannie Davis he would take care that she heard of George’s doings.
Nannie did not like Williams, her admiration being given to more lively characters. Her own youth had been cheerful, to say the least of it, and she despised those who lost their opportunities in that way. His gravity and quietness annoyed her, and the high place he had taken in Mrs. Walters’ estimation made her jealous. Her personal devotion was not given so much to her mistress as to the family she had served so long, but she could not away with the notion of any one else being important to it.
This did not escape Bumpett; he had known Nannie all her life, and they had always been on friendly terms; besides which, their common knowledge of Rhys’ presence in the country had brought them a good deal together.
But chance happened to keep them apart at this moment, and the neighbourhood of the farm had become so abhorrent to him ever since his errand there, that he hesitated to go near the place. Rhys was the only person to whom he had related the affair; he hated even to think of it, and when he at last met the old woman casually in Crishowell village, the news he longed to impart had been burning within him for three weeks.
To do him justice, the Pig-driver’s methods in the matter were not coarse. He did not suggest that Nannie should tell Mrs. Walters straight out, but he worked so adroitly upon her feeling that he left her well assured of success. It was clear by her face that she was aching and longing to have a fling at Williams, that upstart, that interloper, and—worst of all sinners to the uneducated mind—that man who kept himself to himself.