Morgan came back at midnight, and said that the fire was over, not having spread beyond the sheds. He was rubbing his blackened hands on a piece of waste. His eyes fell upon the litter of shredded rushes scattered in witness on the floor near Silas. Nan drooped, pale and tired. He began to tell her about the fire, trying to brighten her and to make her feel that she was no longer a prisoner alone with Silas. He was purposely taking no notice of Silas, but presently looked up to see the blind man standing above them.
He appeared to be immensely tall and haggard, and upon his face was a look of suffering, which by the accentuation of furrow and wrinkle gave the suggestion that he was unkempt. His limbs and torso were hugely, grotesquely reproduced in shadow upon the walls and ceiling behind him. Inscrutable to them, he loomed over Nan and Linnet. At last he spoke.
“You’re glad to have him back, Nan. You’re glad to come back to her, Linnet.”
Their eyes met in tremulous surprise; was Silas to serve as their interpreter?
“You little, dainty people! Oh, yes. I know. Gentle in your dealings. Amiable. Indulgent. You don’t criticise—criticism’s uncharitable—might hurt somebody’s feelings. Let things remain as they are; don’t disturb. Moderation! That’s your creed. Make terms. Compromise!” He dropped ejaculations, and swung into his most rhetorical vein, in which he seemed really possessed by a spirit that released the unfaltering words. “O pliant ones of the earth! blessed are the meek, and flowers shall revive at your passage. Wander into the woods; call to the roe-deer to eat from your hand. Look with envy at the pairing foxes, the nesting birds;no creature so wild that it may escape the yearly call of home. If the fox and the vixen together can burrow their earth for shelter and the whelping of their litter, cannot you two together build a hut of boughs and branches in a clearing beside the stream? Listen: I covet no love, I am debarred; and love when it touches men like me is no virtue, only an indulgence of self and a lapse from strength.” He laughed. “Who would be weak? or bestial? But in you, love shall attain its highest purpose of usefulness and steadfastness. To be steadfast in love is reserved to man; it is the conscious will of love, the sustained reason. Without it, as well be a dog, and couple in the street. Are you fit? You are young and your minds are counterparts; you have no business with me or with Gregory. Leave me to Gregory, and Gregory to me; the dumb shall lead the blind, and the blind shall speak for the dumb. But you, go out, where no strife assails, and concern yourselves with labour. You are the builders, and we are the destroyers; we are the cursed, and you are the blessed. You and your like must build your security upon the ruins of us and our like; it’s the natural law. I might have been another man, but God saw fit to twist me; hewrenched my spirit and upon each of my eyes in turn he laid a finger.”
They sat absolutely speechless, confused and confounded that he should thus trumpet out the secret they had hitherto guarded from one another. They had wondered and suffered and trembled much, but of all outcomes this was an outcome they had certainly never foreseen. It broke over them like a natural catastrophe; Silas was making it into something beyond the diapason of their souls.
“Build!” he said passionately, earnestly, “build with your sanity and your health. Leave query and destruction to the tormented spirits; there will always be enough of those; and if you did but know,—oh, world!” he said, clasping his hands, “if you did but know, you would pity the precursor, solitary and bold. Then comes the army of the workers, with honest tools, and their flowing quietness.—Why should you struggle, you two, beside Gregory and me? You should be side by side, perfectly matched, amongst children who should resemble you. Tell me,” he said, bending down to them, “you love?”
When he reduced it to those naked terms, they were ashamed into honesty, both towards him and towards each other; they assented, as though hewere a priest reading over them a terrible and simple marriage-service.
“Then you shall have the courage to love. You shall go unmolested. You were intended to fulfil, not to renounce. Who pretends to one law for all? Not I; I wouldn’t dare utter such a heresy of intolerance. Not in my sane moments. Who would take a field-bird up into the mountains? His place is simpler; sweeter....”
He suddenly put his hands over his face, and his voice faltered, as though he were spent and had nothing more to say.
“Go away now,” he said fretfully, “I’m tired out.”