She perceived then that, according to the temper of his mind, there was indeed nothing else. She ceased to protest, overtaken by the actual consequence of his uncompromising creed.
“You have killed Gregory,” she said.
A change came over him; his look of flaming justification died down.
“Hannah. Martin. Christine. Gregory,” he said sorrowfully.
Nan was crying; she was frightened by the monstrous, fantastic extravagance of the scene. Silas must have decoyed her to the heart of some distorted maze, where death was not solemn, nor grief venerable; and therein she was lost. Crying, her arm crooked across her eyes, she made her way over to Linnet, who had risen to his feet. “It’s soap,—soap,” she stammered, taking refuge against him.
He held her, since no words could help, and she made herself as small as possible within his arm. Silas called out to him across the gallery, “I havethrown Gregory into the vat,” pointing to the wrong vat, and forcing himself to laugh very loudly.
“But what is to become ofyou? madman!” Linnet exclaimed.
This was a new idea to Silas.
“Yes, I must think of getting away, it’s true,” he replied, suddenly busy; and he moved excitably in what he thought to be the direction of the door. But he had lost his bearings, and struck himself against the corner of a vat. “What’s that?” he called out. “I’ll have no nonsense,” he added, speaking in a tone of incipient panic which he tried to cover up by menace. “There is no time to be lost; I can’t be kept hanging about here, or I shall be taken. I must get away, and hide somewhere. I must hide in a barn. You will have to bring me food. The first thing to be done is to get away.” All the while he was speaking he moved about, groping amongst the vats, trying to find his way out, but amongst that number, where nothing helped him to distinguish one from the other, with each step he became more confusedly lost. “I’m blind!” he cried, at last standing stock-still, and from the anguish in his voice it might have been believed that he had never made the discovery before.
Then he started to stride about, up and down, in and out of the gangways left between the vats, taking any opening that offered itself. Linnet tried to speak to him; he was interrupted, reasonable words fluttered vainly amongst the vibrant emotions with which Silas’s soul was strung. Neither Linnet nor Nan could have any cognisance of such a diapason. “You shall not come near me,” Silas shouted; “how am I to know you wouldn’t give me up? although I killed Gregory for you; and I loved Gregory.—We’ve destroyed one another. It’s right,—people like us ought to go. There’s no place for us. I can’t save myself,” he said, “I’m blind; every one can take advantage of me. How could I live hidden for weeks in the country? But I’ll give them trouble first....”
He was full of a crazy, hopeless defiance; he turned upon them the wild flash of his sightless eyes. “Itmustend in defeat,” he said, “what match is a blind man for clear-seeing men? You had me at a disadvantage, all my life,—all of you! You were orderly, while I struggled. Gone under! but not as tamely as you think.” As he spoke he found the door that gave access to the outside stairs, and dragged it open, blundering out into the air on theiron landing. They saw him there, against the sky, silhouetted for a moment, before he disappeared on his reckless descent of the hazardous stair.