“My poor friend, your sorrow has thrown you off your balance,” said the clergyman as he came forward and laid his hand upon Silas’s shoulder.
“That’s you, Mr. Medhurst?” said Silas, instantly recognising the voice, which indeed was unmistakable. “You’ve prayed over her; well, I hope she’s the better for it. Heaven send me a parson to pray over me when my turn comes, that’s all I say.”
“My poor friend,” the clergyman said again,“pray rather to Heaven now that you be not embittered by your affliction. Let us call forth our courage when the test comes upon the soul; let us pray to be of those whose courage is steadfast even unto death. The lot of man is trouble and affliction, and He in His Mercy hath appointed our courage as the weapon wherewith to meet it.”
“That’s a help, isn’t it, Mr. Calthorpe?” said Silas, “that’s a great help, that thought. Is that what you say, Mr. Medhurst, to a man that’s going to the gallows? What do you tell him—to feel kindly towards his jailers, the judge who condemned him, the jury that found him guilty, the police that arrested him, the man or woman he murdered, the teacher that taught him, the mother that bore him, and the father that begot him? You tell him not to curse them all,—eh? You tell him to feel kindly and charitable like you’ve told me to be long-suffering under my blindness and to have courage now my wife’s dead,—eh? you tell him that?”
“I am not a prison chaplain, Dene,” said Mr. Medhurst, stiffly, removing his hand which, however, he immediately replaced, saying with compassion, “My poor friend, my poor friend! you are sorely tried.”
“There’s worse things than death, Mr. Medhurst,” Silas exclaimed, and he sprang up as though the clergyman’s touch were unendurable to him, and stood in front of the range, having felt his way rapidly across the room. Mr. Medhurst followed him, but Silas heard him coming, and moved away again, behind the table. Mr. Medhurst turned to Calthorpe with a gesture of resignation, saying in a low voice, “These poor fellows! we must be tolerant, Calthorpe,” and Gregory continued to watch the movements and gestures, which he could understand, although he could not hear their speech. “Look here, sir,” Silas began again, “I didn’t know of the accident, not till hours afterwards, as I’ve been telling Mr. Calthorpe,—is Mr. Calthorpe still here?”
“Yes, Silas, I’m still here,” said the overseer.
“Ah, I thought I hadn’t heard the door. Well, I was in the shops, and they told me at five o’clock. When they came to tell me, I asked what time it was, and they told me, five o’clock. Now it was two o’clock when I finished my dinner; I asked Hannah, and she told me, two o’clock. That’s three hours, sir. Mark that. She’d been on that line three hours before her husband knew it. Is that right, when husband and wife should be one?”
“They told you directly she was found, Dene,” said the clergyman. “No one is to blame.”
“I’m blaming no one,” said Silas sullenly, “I only ask you to mark it, sir: three hours. Three hours before I knew.”
“Why does he insist on that point?” thought Calthorpe.
“I’m alone now, a lonely man and a blind one. The inquest now,—must you have an inquest?”
“We are all equal before the law,” said Mr. Medhurst in a gentle and reproving voice.
“And I have to go to it?”
“I am afraid so, Dene.”
“Well, I’ll tell them what I told you: it was three hours before I knew. She was alive at two o’clock, when she left me,” said Silas with great violence, striking his fist upon the table and glaring round the room with his sightless eyes; “you’ve all heard: three hours,—you, Mr. Medhurst, and you, Mr. Calthorpe, and you, Hambley, and you, Nan. Come here, Nan.”
Gregory’s wife went to him, like a dog to a cruel master; he had thrust his fingers through his black hair, and looked wild. He groped for her shoulder; clutched it firmly.
“Tell Gregory, Nan; tell him she had been dead three hours before I knew.”
Gregory’s wife made swift passes with her fingers to her husband, who read the signs and answered in the same language.
“He says you told him that when you first came in, Silas.” She had a clear and gentle voice.
“You hear that, Mr. Medhurst? you hear, Mr. Calthorpe? I told my brother that when I came in. I’m alone now; I had a son, but I don’t know where he is; I had a daughter too, but she went soon after her brother. I stand alone; I don’t count on nobody.”
“Come, Dene; I respect your sorrow, but I cannot hear you imply that your children deserted you: you were always, I am afraid, a harsh father.” Mr. Medhurst spoke in the reprimanding tone that he could assume at a moment’s notice; it was shaded with regret, as though he spoke thus not from a natural inclination to find fault, but from a pressure of duty.
“Why don’t you say that I was harsh to Hannah?” demanded Silas. Mr. Medhurst made a deprecatory movement with his hands; he would not willingly bring charges against a man already in trouble.“Why don’t you say so?” repeated the blind man, upon whom the movement was naturally lost.
“Since you insist,” said the clergyman, “I must say that the whole village knew you were not always very kind to your wife; in fact, I have spoken to you myself on the subject.”
“I knocked her about; I’d do the same to any woman, if I was fool and dupe enough to take up with another one,” Silas said.
His pronouncement left the room in silence; his blind glare checked the words on the lips of both the clergyman and the overseer; he still stood entrenched behind the table, his sinewy hand gripping Nan’s small shoulder, for she dared do nothing but remain motionless, neither cowering away nor moving closer to him, but keeping her eyes bent upon the floor. An oil-lamp swung from the ceiling above the table. Gregory watched them all in turn, from his chair beside the oven; he was really grinning now, and seemed more in the mood to defend his brother’s quarrels with his fist than to take any interest in the visible terror of his wife. Nor did she appear to expect championship from him. She had not thrown him so much as one appealing glance. Living between the two brothers, she mightalmost have forgotten which of the two was her husband and which her brother-in-law; in fact, it had been whispered in the village that the mode of life in the Denes’ cottage was such as to lead the woman into that kind of confusion,—but those who spoke so were the ignorant, who disregarded or else knew nothing of the pride and jealousy of the Denes.
“I didn’t knock her about so cruelly as the train,” said Silas, laughing wildly.
“O Lord!” Mr. Medhurst began, clasping his hands, “look with mercy upon this Thy servant, that in the hour of his trial....”
“Trial? what’s that?” cried Silas. “An inquest isn’t a trial, that I’m aware?”
“... that in the hour of his trial he may rise above the sorrows of the flesh to a more perfect understanding of Thy clemency....”
“It’s just babble,” said Silas, who was shaking now with rage from head to foot.
“Save him, O Lord, from the mortal sin of profanity; endow him with strength righteously to live, bringing him at the last out of the sea of peril into the calm waters of that perfect peace....”
“You so smooth and righteous, sir, I wonder itdoesn’t shock you to see a woman battered in like Hannah’s battered now; yet you went and said your prayers over her; fairly gloated over her, perhaps?”
“Look, O Lord, with mercy upon this Thy poor distraught but faithful servant. Consider him with leniency; mercifully pardon....”
“Look here,” Silas cried, “the Lord’ll hear your prayers just as well if they’re put up from your parsonage. This is my cottage, and my affairs are my affairs; what I do, or what’s sent to me, and how I take it, is my affair. I’ve always held that a man was a thing by himself, specially when he’s in trouble; he isn’t forced to be the toy of sympathy, and of help he doesn’t want. Let me alone. I don’t want your prayers, Mr. Medhurst. I don’t want your holiday, Mr. Calthorpe. I’ll be at my work to-morrow morning same as I always am—same as I was to-day after my wife died, though, mark you, I didn’t know it. I don’t whine, so I don’t want you to do my whining for me. No. I never missed a day at my work yet, and though I’m blind I work to keep myself, and I’ll look after myself, and my rights, blind as I am,—I’ll not be deceived, not I. ‘Poor blind Silas.’ Don’t let me hear you say that. Perhaps I know more than youthink, and guess the rest.” He went off into a string of mumblings, and a slight foam of saliva appeared at the corners of his mouth.
“It’s no good staying here, Mr. Medhurst,” said Calthorpe, trying to get the clergyman away.
“You speak to him, Calthorpe.”
“I’ll try.—Here, Silas, you don’t hate me?” said Calthorpe, going up to the blind man.
“No; you’re a well-meaning, ordinary sort of chap,” replied Silas.
“Yes, I don’t want to be anything else. Now see here, if you think work will keep your mind off things, you must come to work; but if you want to stop away, you can stop away for a week. Is that clear?”
“I’ll come to work. A man’s got a right to decide for himself, hasn’t he?”
“Of course he has; but don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t get mulish. You don’t look right somehow. You’re all out of gear; small wonder just now, but you know as well as I do that you’re a bit ill-balanced at the best of times. Take it easy, Silas.”
“You mean well, I dare say.”
“Yes, I swear I do; don’t say it so grudgingly.See here: cling on to your political grievances, man; they’ll take your mind off your own troubles.”
“I know how to bear my own troubles.”
“I’m only giving you a hint; get angry over something. Go down and make one of your speeches to the debating society. I don’t share your views, and I disapprove of your methods, because they stir up trouble amongst the men, but I’d like to think that something was helping you.”
“Chatter!” said Silas suddenly.
“You’re too damned scornful,” said Calthorpe flushing. “All right then; fight it out with yourself. Snarl at your mates, and scare the women. Make yourself lonelier than you already are, you poor lonely devil.”
Silas laughed at that, and some of the hostility went out of his face.
“Thanks, Mr. Calthorpe. I’ll be at work to-morrow. Going now?”
“Mr. Medhurst and I are both going—unless you want us to stay?”
“No, I don’t want you to stay.”
“No ill-feeling, Silas?”
“None, if you mean because you mislaid a bit of your temper.”
III
Nan opened the door for Mr. Medhurst and Calthorpe, who passed out together and were immediately lost to sight in the fog. In the winter months, fog hung almost continuously over that low, fenny country; white fog; billowy, soaking mist. Little wraiths of it swirled into the kitchen as she opened the door, so she shut it again quickly,—she did everything quickly and neatly. For one moment of panic she wished she could have gone with Calthorpe, who was kindly, commonplace, and easy, instead of remaining alone with those two violent and difficult men, and the dead body of her sister-in-law upstairs. She was weary of the strain that never seemed to be relaxed in their cottage.
“Next time that canting parson comes here, I’ll lay hands upon him,” said Silas.
“Will I get supper now?” asked Nan, trying to distract him.
“What a packet of folk we had!” Silas broke out; “it was rat-tat at the door all the time, till the whole village had passed through, I should say.”
“Folks are kindly,” said Nan.
“Folks are curious,” barked Silas.
She sighed, but, knowing better than to remonstrate, resumed her question.
“Will you have supper now, Silas?” and she repeated the question on her fingers to Gregory. “We’ll eat with you, Silas, to-night. Gregory and I,—we’ll be there whenever you want us. I’ll do the house for you, and your cooking. We’ll all eat together, so long as you want us to.” She was gentle and bright.
“I don’t want your pity.”
She busied herself with getting the supper out of the oven, carrying the hot dishes carefully with a cloth. Gregory watched her, pivoting in his chair to follow her movements. Once he talked to her on his fingers: “Don’t you take no notice of Silas; he looks queer to-night,” and when she answered, “Small wonder,” a broad grin distorted his dark face. His bones and features, strongly carven, in conjunction with the muscularity of his body and the perpetual silence to which he was condemned, made him appear like a man cast in bronze. He was, moreover, singularly still; he would sit for hours without stirring, his arms folded across his chest; he never betrayed what he was thinking, but the others knew that it was always about machinery.Silas, on the other hand, was far more excitable; he was always occupied; his mind had many trains of thought which it pursued; Nan never knew which of the two brothers she found the more alarming, and life had become for her an uneasy effort to conciliate them both. She had hesitated before speaking of supper; meals seemed to accord badly with tragedy.
Silas talked unceasingly; he talked with his mouth full and many phrases were unintelligible. Now and then he mumbled, now and then raised his voice to a shout. He thundered assertions, and spat questions at Nan. Gregory sat crumbling bread and sneering at her distress. She was distressed because Silas was in one of his most uproarious moods, launching opinions on his diverse subjects, every one of which readily attained the proportions of an obsession in his mind; and she was distressed further because she had all the while the alienating sensation that her husband understood his brother better than she did, although he could hear no word. She sat between them, eating very little, while they ate voraciously. She was thinking of Hannah, who lay upstairs.
Once she asked a question. “Who’ll you get, Silas, to live with you now?”
“Linnet Morgan. He’s anxious to find handy lodgings.”
“Linnet Morgan. That’s the chap newly in charge of the scents? Would he live with just working-people like us?”
“What’s the difference?”
Nan could not define it. She had not intended a challenge, but Silas had a trick of treating everything as a challenge.
“He’s soft,” she said at last.
“He’ll learn not to be soft here.”
Towards the end of the supper, Silas fell into one of his silences that were little less alarming than his speech. He sat over the range, chewing his pipe. Nan, having cleared away the supper, made herself small with some sewing in a corner. Gregory, looming hugely about the low room, disposed his drawings on the table under the direct light of the hanging lamp. They were on oiled paper, pale blue, pale pink, and white; large sheets of exact drawings of exquisitely intricate machinery. He bent over them, handling pencils, rulers, small compasses, and other neat instruments of his craft with a certain and delicate touch. He had clamped the drawings to the table with drawing pins, holdingdown the curling corners, smoothing out the shine of the folds. He was lost at once in them, forgetting both his own observant mockery and the tragedy which had seized and shaken his relations in its rough grasp. He was lost in his silent world of smooth-sliding precision and perfection.
His drawing was his hobby, not his profession; he guarded it from the outside world as a secret, and in the factory perversely clung to the meanest and most strenuous physical labour. When his wife protested—with more politeness than indignation—his fingers ran in emphatic oaths. When his machines were ripe to be shown, he would lay them before the whole board of directors; yes, he would startle those gentlemen; but until then he would be a workman, wheeling the barrels of liquid soap to the vats, beating and stirring it in the vats when it needed cooling,—nothing more.
He worked under the light of the lamp, making here a dot of correction, there a measurement of infinitesimal exactitude. His great fingers touched as delicately as those of a painter of miniatures.
The kitchen clock ticked in the stillness.
IV
Nan rose presently, heaping her sewing into her large open basket. Her husband was still absorbed in his drawings, and Silas in his meditations, over which he muttered and scowled. He seemed to be conducting an argument with himself, for his lips moved, he nodded or shook his head, and tapped his fingers upon his knee. Nan hesitated before disturbing him. But she knew that she must warn him before she left the room, for he could communicate with Gregory only with difficulty. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Eh? what’s that?” said Silas, starting; he had been very deeply lost in his thoughts.
“I’m going to our cottage for a bit, Silas, to put things straight there; I’ll be back presently.”
“Gregory’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s got his drawings out on the table.”
Silas grunted, and Nan, after wrapping a muffler round her head and mouth, let herself out of the front door.
In her own kitchen, which was identical with Silas’s in the other half of the cottage, she stood breathing with a sense of relief. Ah! if she mightremain there! But she might not; Silas, who fought all the time against her sympathy and her ministrations, Silas, in spite of that ungracious ferocity, was now dependent upon her and could not be forsaken. Responsibilities by a cruel irony thrust themselves upon her weakness. She, who had so much need of protection, must protect.
She must not idle here.
She began rapidly clearing away the disorder of the day, raking out the fire, and drawing the short curtains across the little windows. She took her husband’s boots into the scullery at the back of the kitchen, and set them ready to be cleaned the next morning. She went upstairs with a candle, turned down the bed, drew the curtains there too, and tidied the dressing-table. Through the partition in the next cottage was, she knew, a similar bedroom, and in that bedroom, where Silas and Hannah had slept every night for twenty-five years and where Hannah’s two children had been born, the remains of Hannah now lay, covered over with a sheet, and Hannah, brawny, loud-voiced, tyrannical towards her sister-in-law, bullied by Silas, at times sullen and at times nosily recalcitrant towards him, would no longer go about the house as a working-woman,her sleeves rolled up, an apron over her dress, clattering pails and mops, ordering stray children off her whitened doorstep. Nan had not loved Hannah, but she thought it horrible that Hannah should be lying through that thin partition, in the disfigurement of which the men had whispered.
She wished that she dared arrange to sleep in another room, but Gregory would be angry.
She finished her work as quickly as she could and returned to Silas’s cottage; only a couple of yards separated front-door from front-door, but, shivering, she pressed her muffler against her mouth to keep out the fog. The light and warmth were welcome again as she slipped into the kitchen.
Silas had not heard her. Gregory had his back to the door and did not see her. He was still bending over his drawings, all unaware that Silas stood near him, speaking, a wild and reckless look upon his face.
“You can’t hear me, Gregory, old man. Old brother Gregory, wrapped up in your drawings! How much do you know, hey? How much do you guess?Idid it—you know that, hey? She laughed at me—with Donnithorne. She played the dirtyon me—with Donnithorne. I hated her, but I’ve got my honour to look after. I shan’t tell anybody, only you, old man. Tell you I did it—hey? Don’t tell anybody, Gregory!”