V
Calthorpe came often to see the Denes after the inquest; no one could have been kinder, more considerate, or more attentive than Calthorpe.
No doubt the Denes would have preferred to keep out Calthorpe, as they had kept out every one else, but he was the overseer, and they tolerated him.
He came on Saturday afternoons, on Sundays, and sometimes on ordinary week-days, during the evening.
He would spend a little time talking to Silas, and then he would knock at Nancy’s door and ask her for confidential information.
“Nobody can tell me so well how Silas is getting on as you can, Mrs. Dene,” he would say; “may I come in for a minute?” or else “would you stroll down the road?”
Nan never strolled down the road, but she always let him into her kitchen and gave him a chair besidethe fire. Sometimes her husband was there, sometimes he was not, but in either case he could not affect the conversation. Nan told Calthorpe one day how it had taken her a little while to become accustomed to the disabilities of the brothers, and to remember that whereas Silas could hear and speak but could not see, Gregory could see but could neither hear nor speak.
“I used to stop and think; now of course I know without thinking. And really you wouldn’t believe how one can get on with Gregory: I talk to him with my fingers like I talk to you with my tongue, it’s no bother. He’s very quick, too, at understanding.”
Calthorpe had already noticed that she never lost an opportunity of praising her husband and advertising her own contentment. She was more reticent about her brother-in-law, and when once Calthorpe asked her why, she replied after a slight hesitation.
“Silas can speak for himself; he doesn’t need any one to speak for him.”
“He can certainly speak!” said Calthorpe. “Do you remember how he startled us all at the inquest? why, by the time he’d finished, half the folk were wondering whether they shouldn’t throw themselvesinto the floods, and the other half whether they shouldn’t go home and strangle their families!”
It was the first time he had directly mentioned the inquest to Nan, and he did so now in full recollection of the effect Silas’s speech had had upon her. He had hesitated long over the problem whether he should ever allude to it or no, but recognising the subject as the shadow always in the background of their talks, he had decided to attack it openly, his intent, as usual, kindly.
“It’s worried you a good deal, I know,” he added.
“Oh,” she began,—he knew that little “Oh,” by which she prefaced her remarks and which always betrayed her nervousness,—“Oh, I don’t think we ought to talk about it, do you?”
“You mean, you don’t want to talk about it?”
She got up in a restless way, and busied herself with a vase of wild flowers upon the dresser, turning herself so that her face was hidden from him.
“Mrs. Dene, you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Oh, don’tdriveme, please,” she murmured, in a voice full of distress.
Calthorpe was very remorseful to feel that he had been the cause of this distress, and he came over to the dresser where she stood arranging the flowers.
“Very well; of course we will never speak of it again,” he said, trying to soothe her, but knowing that if his repentance took too affectionate a form she would immediately shy away from him. “What are you doing with those flowers? look, you have upset some of the water! here’s my handkerchief to mop it up with.”
As she took the handkerchief he saw that there were tears on her cheek, as clear as the drops of water she had spilt from the flowers; but with his large, rough tact he pretended not to notice.
“Where did you find so many flowers, this time of year? Primroses in February! Catkins, of course, and grasses, and a sprig of plum blossom....”
“And some wild violets,” she said, showing him. “Smell them, how sweet!”
“Well, I wish I had somebody like you to put flowers about my place,” he said in a rush of sentiment.
“Will you take these? Yes, please!” crushing them, all wet as they were, into his hands. “I got them in a copse over by Thorpe’s Howland last Sunday, I walked over there....”
“What, by yourself?”
“No, with Silas and Mr. Morgan; it was Gregory’sSunday on at the factory. We started after dinner, Silas was in a good temper, and I was happy to get away from the floods for a bit. You know, there’s a belt of higher ground away there to the south, which never gets flooded. It was nice to see the green again, and to go through woods where the trees didn’t stand with their roots soaking and rotting in water. I hate the floods, they’re so cruel; cruel in a dull, flat sort of way.... Gregory likes them; they make him grin. Of course, Silas can’t see them, but if he could I’m certain he’d like them too; he’s always asking me to tell him just what they’re like. But that Sunday he’d forgotten about them. He was as cheerful as could be, repeating poetry all the time as we went along the lanes; he kept stopping and saying “Now listen to this!” and waving time with his stick as he recited, and Mr. Morgan kept capping what he said, and they laughed a lot, trying to outdo each other.” She smiled at the recollection, leaning with her back against the dresser; then Calthorpe saw the smile disappear from her lips as though at another darker remembrance, and the scared look came into her eyes.
“Well?” he prompted.
“Oh. Well, then we went on till we got toThorpe’s Howland, and we made Silas sit under a beech-tree while we looked for primroses....”
“You and Linnet Morgan?”
“Yes, I and Mr. Morgan. Silas sat under the tree for a bit, pulling up the moss all round him; then he got up and leant against the tree-trunk, saying more poetry; Shakespeare, I think it was. Mr. Morgan beckoned to me to come and listen, so we crept up on tiptoe, and Silas went on like that for about half an hour; I don’t know how he manages to keep it all in his head. I don’t like it so much when he starts his poetry in the kitchen, but in the wood it seemed all right; it might have been part of the wood,” she said, lowering her voice and hanging her head with her pretty, sudden shyness, and scrutinising her finger nails.
“How do you mean: part of the wood?”
“Well,—there was a lot of patchy sunlight on the ground, coming through the trees, and the moss that Silas had torn up smelt bitter,—like earth,—and the primroses smelt soft and sweet. There was the sort of big sand-pit in the bank, where we had picked them. There were the trees, so gray and naked. There was Silas,—Mr. Morgan whispered to me that Silas looked like a tree himself, a tree that hadbeen blasted by lightning, and when he said that, I saw he was right; even Silas’s arms, waving about, were like the branches.”
“Well, well!” said Calthorpe, scratching his chin.
“Mr. Morgan’s like a son to Silas already,” she went on; “he’s gay with him, and he’s as gentle as a woman. He’s never put out by Silas’s ways—never seems to notice them, in fact. And Silas likes him because he can talk to him by the hour about all the things he thinks about and reads about.”
“But Silas always talks to everybody.”
“Yes, he’s so greedy for an audience that he’ll put up with never getting a sensible answer, sooner than not talk at all. But Mr. Morgan’s got education; he’ll argue with Silas; he’s like a whetstone to a knife. He’ll get Silas into a proper excited rage, and then laugh, and Silas takes it in good part. It was a grand day when he came to live in the cottage.”
“Yes,—well, I must be going,” said Calthorpe, moving away, and he went after a rather sulky good-bye, very unlike his usual friendliness and promises to come again.