i
it was not long before she returned, and saw silas alone, with the wreckage created by gregory’s rage still around him.
“silas!” she exclaimed, going up to him, “where’s gregory?—where’s linnet?”
“you ask for them in the same breath?” he replied.
“but i must know!” she said, catching hold of his arm and peering urgently into his face. “silas, what dreadful excitement is making you so quiet, so strung-up like? don’t think that i can’t see it. you’re gathered all into yourself, like as though you were waiting, and your face looks so strange. silas! you are in a trance? for pity’s sake, speak to me. if you won’t speak, i must go. i can’t stop here. i’m going out—to look for them both. only, if you can tell me aught, won’t you do so, silas? you could if you would, i’m sure, and i’m so broken by terror, silas, if you can help me now you’ll surely not refuse?”
255“the sinner must expect to pay,” he said slowly, his eyes wide open and glazed into impassivity.
“but i haven’t sinned, god be my judge!” she cried, wringing her hands together. “silas, i do conjure you, as you hope for mercy yourself, let your lips speak; tell me—for you know—where they’ve gone, and why? tell me where i can find them. oh, if i were there, i could come between them, and if gregory must injure me, why, then, he must, but i should know, i should know; it’s this doubt, this knowing that they’re together, this not knowing what they may be saying! it kills me, silas. silas, see here, listen to me, silas: i’ve not been bad to you, have i, silas? we’ve not been bad to you, linnet and i? well, have a little mercy on us now: we’ve loved, yes, but we’ve done no more wrong than that. i wouldn’t, with gregory away. we were to tell gregory everything, so soon as he came back. you know that, silas.—oh, you’ll not help me: i see it by your face. what are you thinking of? i never saw you look so terrible. but i haven’t time to beseech you more; i must go, and take my chance of finding them, and may your wicked heart be afraid for whatever goes amiss.”
256“you’ll not go,” he said suddenly, holding her down.
she struggled against him.
“silas, you hurt my wrist; let go, i say. oh, i see it: you’re in with gregory, you’ve tricked us; my god, what can linnet and i do against you and gregory?—you laugh at that, you fiend,” she said, quietening into despair; “you laugh,” she said, rocking her head piteously from side to side, “you laugh, you laugh!”
“gregory’s honest,” he pronounced; “i’ve got three of you, not two, in the net. gregory’s my dupe too; he’s an honest man.”
“but, then, why? in god’s name, why? what is it, silas? are you mad or sane? are we to be your toys? what have we done to you? what had hannah done?”
“hannah?...”
“you killed hannah.”
he still held her down on a chair, and by the high standard of their present stress the retrospective admission that he had killed hannah seemed to them both subordinate. he was breathing heavily.
“hannah laughed at me and fooled me; she was rough with me, and sweet-tongued enough with 257other men. i wasn’t going to be fooled by hannah. she’d thrown in her lot with mine, and if i suffered she should suffer too. that’s why i killed hannah. the world’s been made black for me; i’ll make it black for others.”
“it’s awful, your revengefulness.... but i tried to make it less black, silas, so did linnet; look, i don’t ask you now to help me, or to tell me anything, but only to let me go,—won’t you, silas? it’s so easy for you to keep me here; i can’t escape from your strength if you’re determined to hold me. but i beg you; i beseech you. often you tried me high, and if i failed you i ask your forgiveness. only let me go now. don’t help me; i don’t ask that; only give me the chance of helping myself. i ask with all the patience and humbleness in me; i’m in bitter anguish, silas. gregory’s hard enough, heaven knows, but he’s got the heart of a woman next to you.”
“gregory’s less bereft than i; i only have my own mind to feed upon.”
“surely that’s true of us all, blind or not blind?” she said, in a weak attempt at argument.
“then i was born with a darkened mind, not only with darkened eyes,” he exclaimed violently, and 258with renewed determination. “i’m cursed with the one as much as with the other, and though god knows no justice i’ll throw in my quota to balance the scales: i never deserved the curse i got, but, since i got it, i’ll deserve it; and i’ll see to it that others get something they don’t deserve, as i did myself. did you ever consider what blindness meant? to be dependent on others’ charity, to be a burden, a maimed thing? above all to have to submit to pity, when you were born with a spirit that wanted the envy of other men?”
“silas, silas, all that’s just words, and meantime you’re draining the life out of me.”
“you’re not nan,” he said, “not nancy dene; you’re just the victim of my curse. what does it matter that you never knew lady malleson? blind, you call me? why, i think we’re all blind—blind instruments, not more blind one than the other.”
“gregory only breaks my things,” she cried out, kicking with her toe at a fragment of china, “but you’re putting all my happiness in pieces.”
“yes,” said silas, “i told you he was an honest man.”
“that’s why we would have put everything to him honestly,” she began with extreme earnestness; 259“we would have told him we hadn’t sought one another out, but that something led us.... we had talked it all over, what we would say. silas, will nothing soften you? you talk about courage: we meant to be brave, not deceitful; you even urged us, once, after the fire, to hold to one another if we loved truly. you said we were the builders; you talked beautiful. i never knew a man talk like you talk, sometimes, silas. you seem all lifted-up.... maybe you wouldn’t see so bright if you didn’t see so black. i had a feeling for you; oh yes, i had! though all the while i knew about hannah, and after hannah, martin. but i didn’t know then that after hannah and martin it would be me and linnet—and linnet! you seemed kindly to us, of late. was it all a trap? did you never feel kindly while you spoke us fair? oh, silas, everything’s going from me. it’ll go badly between linnet and gregory. if i was there, i’d manage; you fight things as they come along; and linnet, he needs me to look after him. he’ll be stiff and buttoned-up with gregory, but that’s not the worst: it’s gregory i’m afraid of. not speaking, he puts everything into his fists; you know what he’s like, silas. and linnet’s my life,—my life. i’m telling you more 260than i ever told him, save once. won’t you let me go?” she moved her wrist tentatively within the clench of his fingers.
“i waste, i fail,” said silas, holding her wrist more closely than before; “the day you came from sussex to abbot’s etchery you were meant to fall in with me. i told you already, you’re not nan dene; you’re a thing. you’re part of my design. you, and your little loves, and dreams and what-not—i’ll grind you. when i was a boy, i set out to give people as bad a time as i had myself. my mother hated my father and was afraid of him; he used to jeer at her when he saw how much she hated gregory and me. because we were deformed, you understand. once i was given a rabbit for a pet; well, i put out its eyes with a needle. that makes you shiver: i hold that it was only just. now i’ve got you; you’ll be better game than hannah, because that was over too quickly; but you, once linnet is taken away from you, and you’re brought back where you belong, to my brother, to be my brother’s wife, his faithful, broken, submissive wife—i’ll know that every day your prettiness will wither, you’ll never sing, you’ll never put out china for gregory to break, you’ll shun young men because you’ll have 261known the pain of love, you’ll bury your heart below a mound, and your hopes beside your heart, and so you’ll grow old between gregory and me, and we’ll speak less and less, until you and i sit as silent as gregory himself.”
he paused, but she gave only a small moan.
“you were right,” he went on, “linnet is with gregory now. i sent linnet off, and now i’ve sent gregory to join him. you won’t see him again,—not if i know gregory. gregory won’t tell us what took place between them,—not he! he’ll come home presently, and you’ll get our supper, and have yours between us, and after supper gregory’ll get out his drawings. and every evening afterwards will be the same,—exactly the same. maybe you’ll have children and watch them growing like me; you don’t know, yet, what seeds might be lying in your children’s minds. i’d watch over them, never fear; i’ll not have my nephews grow into milksops, into sentimental dabs....”
he spoke with such virulence that nan cried out, unbearably slashed. that seemed to gratify him, for he settled down into an intermittent growl:—
“your children.—your sons.—but denes, all the same.—who stands alone?” he muttered, taken up 262on that revived train of thought, “who stands single? no one, it seems; your sons wouldn’t be solely yours. where’s independence? not in this world. o folly! to let it slide, even in part, into another’s keeping. where would be your trouble now, if linnet hadn’t your heart? freedom goes when the heart goes.—not strong enough.—loneliness and labour,—yes, surely.”
“’tisn’t all that, ’tis happiness you grudge,” said nan, suddenly bitter.
“that’s your little view: there spoke nan dene!—and if you thought that, anyway why did you flaunt your happiness in my face? eh?”
“oh, silas, you kept asking me....”
“and if i did! was it part of your kindness that you boast of, to give me the glimpse of a feast i couldn’t share? was it meant as a treat? you’d be willing to give me kindness; i couldn’t expect more,—a blind man like me. very lucky to get as much.” he roared suddenly with laughter. “that’s a pallid sort of thing to offer,—i won’t give you thanks for that,” he cried.
nan thought that he was really going mad; madness and disaster had broken crashing over her world. the forces loosed were too great and too bewildering 263for her to strive against; the sanity of linnet, the sanity of their joy, was lost for ever, lost, foundered in the madness of the hurricane brought about by silas and gregory. for gregory there might be some excuse; silas appeared to be possessed by a senseless, impersonal fury of destruction. she thought she might as well argue with the unleashed elements as with silas in his bitterness and diabolical delight. yet life still moved, still endeavoured; and, pricked by its promptings, she struggled,—
“you hurt me and linnet because we are safe to hurt; we can’t hurt you back.”
“it’s not true!” he yelled.
she was utterly astonished at the effect she had produced.
“but, silas,” she said, inspired, “we all know you for a coward. we all know your talk for bluster. did you think we didn’t know that, by now?”
ii
she had not at first spoken tauntingly. she thought she had meant only to pronounce the truth. then she perceived that the truth had cut deeper than any taunt. she was as a naked, unarmed person 264driven up against a wall, that finds suddenly a blade put into their hands. she held it, but was perplexed how best to use it. she made a thrust,—
“all your talk is talk. it costs you nothing to ruin linnet and me. it cost you nothing to throw out martin.—and hannah,” she whispered, “and hannah!—what have you ever done that hurt yourself?”
from the tremor of the hand still clutching her wrist she discovered that he was shuddering.
“you dare speak to me so?” he threatened.
“hit me,—i can’t hit back,” she replied, upheld.
but he made no movement to injure her. his defeat was as complete as it was sudden. against his determination, which no appeal could have moved, no bribe impressed, she had turned the sole effective weapon, his own intrinsic weakness. there was no repair possible to a breach that had started from the inside. she had struck down upon the rot within him and the inner walls of his defences crumbled.
iii
failing to understand what she had brought about, she sat watching him, alarmed, perplexed, but, 265through her confusion, something stirred, which might perhaps not be called hope, but which was at least removed from the despondency of death that had lately descended upon her. he maintained upon her wrist a grasp that had now become automatic; he sat bent, covering his eyes with his free hand. she recognised only that he must work his way towards his decision without interference on her part; he was beyond such interference, and although the stealing away of time roused her anxiety to the pitch of physical pain, she constrained herself to wait, tense, in the knowledge that silas passed through a crisis no less momentous than her own. he moved his body uneasily about, and unintelligible mumblings like groans escaped him. he fought; he wrestled. he fixed that sightless gaze upon nan, saying in tones of reluctant abnegation, “and am i to end so?” he cried out once, startling her by the anguish that tore his voice, “failure! failure! beaten by a jeer! weakness beats me; poor blind silas, poor weak silas, couldn’t stick to his purpose even when his end was in sight!” one thing was clear, that he suffered intensely; but the complexity of his sufferings was hopelessly beyond her comprehension. she could only wait, and, trembling, 266watch. she no longer tried to free her wrist, fearing by that mere flutter of self-assertion to recall his former mood. she tried to pray, and her mind produced a prayer like a child’s, “please, god....” his ravings had ceased, and nothing now came from him but the small phrases that jerked themselves to the surface, after which the riot and despair of his thoughts were again submerged. “flotsam and jetsam,” he muttered. striking his chest, he said, “here stands silas dene, who helped two children to happiness,—let that be my epitaph!” “where’s truth? do i know my own mind, or don’t i?” after these disjointed remarks, that emerged at intervals, like milestones marking off the painful road he was travelling, he released her and stood up. “i’ll save you yet,” he pronounced. “stay you there and let me manage things my own way. you’ve nothing to fear now,—once there was something to fear in me, perhaps, but that’s a thing of the past. that’s finished. you stay where you are, and i’ll bring linnet to you.”
“you may be too late,” she said.
“i’m not too late,” he replied, with such certainty that she was misled into thinking he had some inner knowledge.
267he put her quite gently away from him as she tried to detain him, pleading to be allowed to help.
iv
he passed out of the house, guiding himself by his finger-tips that brushed lightly against the doorpost. not daring to disobey by following him, nan saw him thus lower himself to the doorstep, whence he set out down the street in the direction of the factory, slipping his fingers along the walls of the houses. she wondered whether she might venture to follow at a distance. inactivity seemed, in that pregnant hour, intolerable.—slowly she put her shawl over her head and stood in the doorway holding the edges of the shawl close under her chin, and exerting her eyes to keep pace with silas. he strode on as though confident in perfect vision; only that outstretched hand slipping rapidly from house to house set any peculiar mark upon his progress. but nan, with a solicitude whose almost maternal quality she recognised with a shock of dismay, thought, “he’s going much too fast,” for she made no allowance for the quickening of all his instincts under the exalted condition of his mind. she had now no enmity 268towards him. she was too well-used to his violence to bear him any grudge for that, and moreover, in her eyes, if he intervened on her behalf and linnet’s, he was redeemed. she recognised obscurely that he had considered himself shamed,—shamed to the extent of catastrophe—but this problem she banished as beyond the scope of her understanding. if he would but come to her aid and linnet’s she would accept,—oh, with what thankfulness!—the benefit at his hands without perplexity or investigation.
he had turned the corner, and, keeping her distance, she began to follow.
v
when the factory came in sight she realised from the absence of movement about the buildings, that six o’clock had long since struck and that the work-people, in consequence, had left their employment for the day. the evening shift, reduced to a minimum, would be occupied in one or two specialised portions only,—in the boiler-rooms, for example, or amongst the engines. for all practical purposes the denes had the place to themselves. a terrible doubt overcame her: might silas, still, be playing the 269double game? she pressed onward, dwarfed by the immense sheds and chimneys that bulked around her. she could see silas as he crossed the tessellated square. he advanced with scarce more caution, although he had now no wall to guide him, and, having no stick, held his hand at arm’s length before him until some contact should bring him up short. she had the dread that, did he but turn round, he would perceive her. she walked on tiptoe, skirting the sheds under cover of the great water-butts. sick terror possessed her, and the imminence of disaster weighed her down.
she saw silas reach the foot of the long, outside, ladder-like stairs that led to the upper gallery of the main building, and, setting his feet confidently upon the iron steps, begin to climb.
vi
he climbed without pause, dwindling to a small figure aloft, to nan so far below. she leant in collapse against a huge tarred water-butt, pitiably undecided whether by ascending after him she would do more harm or good. the question was of such importance to her, but its resolution depended upon 270her poor unguided wisdom, and she shrank from the responsibility. still silas climbed, and stood at last upon the topmost landing, and disappeared from her view.
when he disappeared she hesitated no longer, but ran from her shelter of concealment, and started pulling herself up on the ascent. she went up the steep stairs, pulling hand over hand on the iron rail that served on one side as banister. she thought that she would soon be on a level with the black smoke floating from the chimneys. through the perforations of the iron steps she could see the ground below, and when she turned her head she found that the roofs of the village had become apparent. she had never been up this way before, but always by the inner staircase. but silas, of course, had chosen the more gaunt, the more perilous method of approach.
landings on the way up admitted to two other storeys; these she passed, having a glimpse of machinery within. the top windows, square and bleak, were those of the gallery,—gregory’s gallery. she was upon the landing, and slipped in through the door which had been left ajar. everything moved quickly now, too quickly to admit of any interference 271or direction, and what would be done now would never have the chance of being undone, nor would there be time for any reckoning or dexterity, in the vehemence of colliding passions that listened to no argument and were endowed with a strength beyond the reasoned energy of will.
inside the five-hundred foot length of gallery the vats stretched away in low regular ranks, under the even light of the flat windows, pale-brown with dirt. the soap in the vats shifted and breathed; spat and slithered as it boiled. linnet lay unconscious on the ground, as though he had been dropped there by a man surprised at his work; cast down with no more care than a toy by some formidable strength; and forgetful of prudence, nan was instantly on her knees beside him. the other two were at a little distance, obvious of all save their last terrible combat. speech and sight respectively denied them, a finer understanding taught them mutual penetration. they might have been ringed about by flames. they were alert only for one another. kneeling on the ground at linnet’s side, nan kept her gaze fastened upon them: it was to her very strange that gregory should appear so fully aware of his brother’s change of front. that he was aware of it, there could be 272no doubt; he had set himself ready in the attitude of a wrestler awaiting an onslaught. and silas,—had heaven miraculously restored sight to silas, that he advanced with such slow certainty towards his brother? he crouched, stalking him. he never once blundered against a vat.
gregory leapt suddenly upon him, and in an instant their limbs were locked.
vii
thus grappled, they seemed to sway as a double monster heroically proportioned, a herculean group against the flat light of the pale-brown windows. so superbly matched were they in physique that they remained almost motionless, swaying very slightly and with difficulty under the strain of their utmost effort. that stillness and that silence accompanying so supreme a struggle, were startling, portentous, and unnaturally impressive, as though the contained violence within were too mighty, too self-sufficient, to seek the relief of any visible outlet whether of noise or movement. their meeting was a muffled encounter of force with force; it had not 273the crash of a collision. so they remained, arrested, stirred only by that almost imperceptible rocking, until doubt might have arisen whether they so held one another grasped with deadly intent, or, as the likeness between them more palpably emerged, in a brotherly welding against some danger imminent and extraneous. their feet yielded not at all from their original planting upon the boards, their arms flung around one another had neither relaxed nor shifted, the slight angle at which their bodies were bent remained the same. the group they formed was of bronze beneath the spanning iron girders. but indeed the question became one of endurance, while the body’s tension, flung on the hollowed hips, the quivering thighs, the knotted calves, and lean ankles, strained and cracked under the sustained tautening of human sinew. the one who was first to yield, by so much as the stagger of a foot, would find the advantage narrowly pursued, his opponent weighing down upon him, pressing him hard across their meagre margin.—yet, were they meeting in alliance or hostility, the two brothers, so alike in their carved features, in the duplication of torso and huge opposing members?
very slowly they bent together, straining; very 274slowly straightened themselves again to their formation of deadlock. all this strife took place without a sound, and seemed to occupy a long period of time, as though that group were permanent in the gallery, taking on the dingy monochrome and adapting itself to the proportions of the gallery’s enormous setting. nan, the impotent onlooker, could foresee no ending, no outcome. she saw that gregory stared into his brother’s face with a concentration of hatred. there was very little to indicate the intense pressure of strength that each was putting forth. but a difference was creeping in,—certainly a difference was creeping in. gregory’s determination was becoming the determination of misgiving, silas’s that of ultimate mastery. he did not appear triumphant, but quietly sure. throughout, he had been guided by that security of vouchsafed insight.
nan dared not stir. she continued to kneel beside linnet, who still lay with his eyes closed, and the mark of a bruise blackening rapidly on his temple. she was deeply thankful for his unconsciousness.
the other two held her eyes. gregory shifted a foot backwards to steady his balance; it was their first definite movement. their faces were close; 275not angry, but concentrated, and silas’s was like a cast mask of unflinching patience. it frightened nan to look at silas’s face, he was so immeasurably beyond both the greatness and the smallness of things human. he was like an incarnation of purpose, summoned for one set, finite task. his pressure was beginning to tell upon gregory, who sought to improve his grip, but lost ground in so doing, and, staggering backwards, was driven to prop himself against the side of a vat. here their grapple became more desperate, more final, in the same unbroken silence. nan’s imagination could not extend to reasons or to outcome; it did not extend beyond the struggle of the moment. she was numbed; all energy was absorbed by that group of wrestling titans.
she bent down to linnet, whose eyes had opened dazedly upon her. when she looked up again she saw a change. silas had stooped until his arms clasped his brother below the waist. for one terrible moment she saw gregory lifted off his feet, his arms flung impotently up, his body bent back in its supreme effort, his throat extended, to give vent to the most hideous sound she had ever heard uttered. silas bore him up for a moment in that gesture of appalling 276ravishment, rearing like a centaur in the full magnificence of his strength; and with one mighty heave cast the burden from him into the boiling yellow slime of the vat.
