He saw that he could do nothing against her, and indeed was too proud to try. His pride had risen correspondingly to his humiliation; he would show her that something, at all events, in him was not a sham. He was terribly, doubly hurt,—hurt in his heart, and hurt, too, with the uneasy wound of pride, his pride towards her, his pride towards himself. All that she had said had been so true; she had found the truth as a weapon, and had beaten him with it across the face. He was so battered, sogashed with scorn, that he was surprised to find himself still alive and sentient. But hewassentient. Hewasindomitable. His life was so strong that it had not been knocked even temporarily unconscious. It stirred: he spoke.
“I shall say nothing to justify myself,” he began. “If your ladyship wishes to think ill of me you must do so, although I dare say I could alter your opinion.” He was prompted to say this by a phrase that had occurred to his mind, and which gave him some private consolation, “I have, after all, murdered my wife, defied God, and banished my own son.” But he did not say these words aloud. “You are of course free, my lady,” he went on, “to dismiss me without being besought by me. You call me a coward; you forget I have the courage to live alone.”
“The egoism,” she amended.
“No!” he said sharply, “it’s discipline, not inclination, and it began when I was a boy, because I wouldn’t have pity. Now it’s a habit. I’ve shut myself off from pity. I’m well schooled.”
“Is that all you have to say?” asked Lady Malleson, as he ceased.
“Did you expect me to plead for mercy? Youwere quite right when you said you knew only the part of me that I was willing for you to know. If you had known everything, my lady, you might have been startled.” He was nursing his secret phrase. “But I plan very carefully what I shall betray to different people. Being blind, I must invent things to think about.”
“You are a demon!” broke from Lady Malleson.
Silas smiled a bitter, gratified smile; he had at least succeeded in making her angry. Having done so, could he reconquer her? Should he risk the affront of failure? She was all he had. No! if she cared so little, let her go. He would not submit to being patronised, to being kept on sufferance by the woman who alone had the privilege of twisting the strings of his heart. If that privilege, so grudgingly, so agonisingly accorded, were to be so little esteemed, let her go! What matter? A loneliness the more.
“I thought at first that I would tell Emma to bring you to the abbey,” she resumed, more quietly; “I thought that the setting would please you and satisfy your sense of histrionics. It would have been so thoroughly Silasian. For youarehistrionic, aren’t you, Silas?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“You and I, sitting on two cane chairs, in the dark abbey,” she went on, “while I poured out to you in an undertone all my opinion of you, my new opinion, for the first time, my true opinion, and then, who knows? the organist might have come in to practise, and so provided an accompaniment for your answer. I really believe your answer would have varied according to the music. It would tickle you to sway your life on a dainty chance like that. I wonder that I overcame the temptation.”
“A great pity,” said Silas indifferently, but as though he had allowed himself to be beguiled a moment by the charm of the suggestion. She was annoyed with herself; she felt that she had allowed her irony to run away with her, to become a little too wild, especially when he continued in a tone of irreproachable conventionality, “I must now thank your ladyship for the kindness shown in the past and for the many hours I have been allowed to spend at Malleson Place. I appreciate that it isn’t many poor chaps like me that’s given the advantage. It’s been a gift blown me by the ill wind of my wife’s death and my blindness. Your ladyship has a kind heart,—they all say so in the village whenthey hear of the favours shown to blind Dene.” As he spoke he made small staccato movements with his fingers, bearing a resemblance to the dart of Gregory’s pencil in some minute alteration of his designs, a family resemblance, that in its finicky precision was equally incongruous to both brothers; in Silas the gestures seem to indicate the finishing touches to a work of art about to be laid aside; the touches were given, possibly, with regret, but still with a certain affectionate satisfaction, as to work well done, and opportunely completed; (he marvelled at himself even as he spoke and gesticulated); they irritated Lady Malleson with a small, wiry irritation, like some insignificant but exasperating physical pain, causing her to forget what she had called the grandeur of Silas, and to remember only the warped, malicious artistry in which he appeared to take delight.
Then he changed; he towered; he dwarfed her; all her superiority went in a flash.
“Listen,” he said then, so suddenly that she had the impression that he had stepped bodily out of a disguise,—“Your interest in me may have been unreal to you,—how could it have been otherwise? You are a fine lady, you have been through manyexperiences; I’m a rough fellow, and I dare say bitter and brutal enough....”
“You like to think yourself brutal, don’t you?” she interjected.
“Such as I was,” he said, “you had me; are you proud of what you made of me?—Oh!” he said, hearing her movement of impatience, “I won’t make you discourse; only that question I wanted to ask you: are you proud of what you made? Only this: was Isounworthy of your ladyship? Have you been sullied by my contact? Or have I, by God,” he thundered at her, “been sullied by yours? I’m not so sure. What are you wondering in your mind now? whether you can trust me to go away and hold my tongue? You think you won’t risk putting the idea of indiscretion into my head; you probably think it will come there quite soon enough by itself. Are you any less of a coward than I? You need have no anxiety, I’m not tempted to revenge myself on you in that way,—you think of that, you’re preoccupied with that, but do you think at all of what you may have done to me? You picked me up casually, and you think you can put me down in the same way. But, between picking me up and putting me down, you’ve worked on me; you don’tleave me quite the same as you found me; and I’m not an easy metal.”
She was frightened when he said that, and muttered hurriedly, “I hope I haven’t done you any harm.”
“One doesn’t know what harm or good one does,” he replied, “working-man or grand lady. You’ll go your way. I’m asking you only whether you’ll remember me with pride, or whether you’ll think of yourself as one of the things that dragged me back, when I was always trying to escape? I’m not strong, you know. I’m not strong. I’m only cursed with a spirit that’s totally beyond my strength.”
“I don’t understand,” she said uneasily; she tried to tell herself that he was making a great fuss; but she could not get away from the idea that the “fuss” was tragically weighted.
“You’re quite safe,” he said, with extraordinary gentleness. “I never wanted to love, you know, either you or any one else; I often told you so; but it isn’t love that I abuse, only the weakness that submits to it. And I have to acknowledge that you are wise in getting rid of me. I’m all awry, you know; misbegotten; and folk like me are better left alone; their misfortune only rubs off on to otherpeople. You are wise to protect yourself; that’s always a wise thing to do. I could wish only that you had done it earlier; you would have made it easier for me.”
The melancholy of his reproach surprised her into saying, “Is it at this moment that you’re speaking from your heart, or was it just now?” and she remembered the sharp finicky gestures he had made when he thanked her for the kindness she had shown him. “To what extent are you theatrical?” she asked, in a little outburst of bad temper.
“That isn’t a question I should answer, even if I had the answer at the tip of my tongue,” he replied. “You may think, if you choose, that I am never sincere.” (She thought, “He is going back to his old manner.” She was greatly thankful.) “Perhaps I am no more sincere,” he continued, standing there, “than any of your ladyship’s little gimcracks in this room.” His reference to her gimcracks was not contemptuous; he seemed rather to be translated into a region where a large gentleness held sway. Ironically enough, she thought that she had never seen him before, although this was the last time she was seeing him. A similar idea appeared to strike him at the same moment, for he said, “All along, I havefought against you, and tried to disguise myself from you. It doesn’t matter now. I seem always to be fighting,—floundering about,—don’t I? I wonder whether I shall ever get away? away from myself? Would your ladyship ring for Emma now? I should like to go.”
She got up wearily and crossed the room to the bell. He was standing there, no longer scathing, but quiet, patient, and tired. She looked at him; and, going swiftly to him, she caught his hand.
“Listen, Silas. Perhaps I’ve been too hasty. Listen to me. Perhaps I need not dismiss you altogether ... I might reconsider....”
“No,” he brought out with extreme firmness, as though he extorted from a long way off the last tragic effort of an overstrained will.
“As you please,” she said, dropping his hand, and in her angry haste she threw open the door to urge the maid who was coming to lead him away.