I  
Calthorpe and Mr. Medhurst had entered into a conspiracy to spare Silas from attending the inquest.
As they walked away from the Denes’ cottage together, in the fog, they did not speak for some time. They were turning the same thoughts over in their minds as they paced side by side down the village street, seeing the lights in the windows on either hand very dimly through the fog. The lantern which Calthorpe carried, swaying, lit up a pale milky circle but cast no forward ray. They were chilled; little drops of moisture gathered on the clergyman’s eyebrows and on Calthorpe’s brown beard; their very footfalls seemed to be muffled by the fog.
“It was warmer in Dene’s kitchen, Calthorpe!” said the clergyman at last, handling his chilblained fingers tenderly, and then beating his hands together in their thick woollen gloves.
36“Yes, sir, but I’d sooner be out here than in that unhealthy sort of atmosphere,—like that poor little woman. I think, if you ask me, the fog was thicker in that room than it is out here. I scarcely liked to come away leaving her there. I never saw any one look more out of place. And so resigned, too; never a thought of revolt. But not glum, not pulling a long face; that’s what touched me.”
“No doubt she enjoys sufficient philosophy and religion to accept with a brave fortitude the lot she has herself chosen,” said Mr. Medhurst.
Calthorpe, who had been feeling slightly exalted and full of a chivalrous emotion, the novelty of which surprised him agreeably, thought that Mr. Medhurst laid hands of lead upon a butterfly.
“Well, I thought there was something lighter about her than that, somehow,” he said, struggling; but as the clergyman remained rigid, with a compassionate murmur of “Poor soul!” he turned to another subject. “Silas Dene seemed more excitable than usual, sir; they are strange fellows, those two, and you never know how they are going to take things. Silas’s readings work upon his mind; he’s full of queer theories. No doubt you’ve noticed, 37Mr. Medhurst. First he’s off on one hobby-horse, and then another. Politics, death, women, fate, science, even poetry—he’s got his views on them all; not lukewarm views, or ready to listen to argument, as you or I might be, but loud, aggressive views, and contradiction only makes him angry. He fairly bullies the village; I don’t know how he does it, but all the chaps are too much afraid of him to turn upon him.” Calthorpe came at last with a rush to the real point he had in sight, and said, “I thought his manner more than usually queer to-night; queerer, I mean, even than the circumstances warranted?”
“Yes; his irreverence—I might almost say his blasphemy—was very painful to hear; but we must remember, he is sorely tried.”
Calthorpe grunted.
“I wasn’t considering it, sir, only from the point of view of the church,” he suggested.
They had reached the little gate leading to the Rectory, and Mr. Medhurst stood with his hand on the latch. The breath of the two men eddied like smoke in the fog above the pallid light of Calthorpe’s lantern. Mr. Medhurst repressed his desire for the shelter of his own study, inhospitable as it was; so 38faint a stirring could scarcely be dignified by the name of desire, but such as it was he repressed it, recognising an enemy; personal inclinations were allowed no place in a life of monotonous mortification; his conscience ordered him to remain out in the raw evening until Calthorpe had finished saying whatever he might have to say, so he remained. Suavity, patience, tolerance, impartiality; above all, no self-indulgence.
“Yes, Calthorpe?” he prompted.
“That man’s not in a fit state to attend an inquest,” the overseer brought out.
“Ah. No, perhaps not,” said Mr. Medhurst, and then, startled, “You don’t mean....”
“Good gracious, sir, I don’t mean anything,—only to spare the man. It’s a clear enough case of accident,” muttered Calthorpe. “I’m only afraid he’ll lose his head if he’s brought to the inquest; begin to rant on all his pet topics, do himself harm very likely; be talked about; give a bad name to the factory; perhaps lose his job. The Board is very particular. And I can’t help having a liking for Silas Dene; he’s a sound worker, he’s full of pluck, he doesn’t drink as many men would under his circumstances. I can’t help having a respect for the 39man. He’s something out of the ordinary. Can’t we keep him away from the inquest, Mr. Medhurst?”
“Unfortunately, he was the last person to see his wife alive.”
“I think I can get round the coroner, sir, if you’ll back me up.” Calthorpe was quite eager.
“I will certainly lend you my support,” said the clergyman rather dubiously. “After all, it is a clear case of accident, as you say, and the inquest will only be a formal affair. I suppose it is really a clear case,” he added, “but his manner was very peculiar.”
“There now, sir,” said Calthorpe, pouncing on him, delighted to have proved his point, “you know Silas Dene as well as I do, and we both trust him, yet, having seen him in this state, you’re aware of the beginnings of doubt; what about the coroner, who comes out from Lincoln, and has never heard of Dene or his record before? I tell you, we must keep the man away. It’s only decent, only Christian. The man’s blind in more ways than one; we must see for him, and keep him from hitting his head against a wall.”
“No doubt you are right; I’ll help you. Send 40for me when you want me, Calthorpe; good-night.”
“Good-night, sir; thank you.”
Calthorpe hurried away with his lantern into the fog; Mr. Medhurst let himself in at his front door. He wondered whether he had been too hasty in leaving Calthorpe, whether he ought not to have inquired more thoroughly into the overseer’s exact meanings. Had his wish for creature comfort relaxed the vigilance he kept over his conscience? In any case, it was too late now for regrets. With a sigh he laid his coat, his clerical hat, his muffler and his gloves on the sideboard in his narrow hall, and, passing into his study, held a match to the gas-jet above his table. A small pop of explosion resulted in a thin blue flame. No fire burnt in the grate; Mr. Medhurst never permitted himself a fire until seven o’clock in the evening, and by the clock he saw that it was only half-past six. He blew upon his fingers, trying to warm them. For a few moments he knelt in prayer for guidance at his black horsehair sofa, then, rising, he drew his chair up to the writing-table and began to deal, methodically, with a pile of his papers. He had pigeon-holed Silas Dene already in the files of his mind.
41
II
 
Silas Dene came to the inquest in spite of Calthorpe’s intervention, Mr. Medhurst’s collaboration, and the coroner’s acquiescence.
He had agreed not to come; he had been surly and ungracious, but finally had given his consent and had even added a word of conventional gratitude. He had given a written affidavit, which was read at the inquest before his arrival. All evidence had been taken, that of Dene’s mates, of the driver of the truck-train,—the fog had been very thick at the level-crossing, and he couldn’t see five yards ahead of him,—that of the shunters who had found the body lying across the rails. All had gone smoothly in unbroken formality; the inquest was held in the village concert-room, with the body lying next door; Calthorpe was there, Mr. Medhurst, a representative of the board of directors, and many of the factoryhands who out of curiosity had interpolated themselves as possible witnesses; the proceedings were nearly over, and the verdict about to be pronounced, when after a fumbling at the door Silas Dene appeared suddenly in the room.
He was alone, and in the unfamiliar room he stood stock still, solitary, detached and startling; 42isolated as a man who has vast spaces around him, regardless of the cheap pitch-pine walls that actually confined him. He was bare-headed, in his working-clothes, as rugged as the bole of a storm-wrecked tree on the borders of a great plain. All gazed at him, and the coroner ceased speaking.
Silas broke the silence to say, in a restrained but threatening voice,—
“Is this the inquest?—I came here by myself,” he went on; “I was in the shops. I know Mr. Calthorpe persuaded me not to come. Then I changed my mind. I thought I’d like to hear for myself. Will some one take me to a place?”
They were amazed at his feat of travelling unescorted from the shops where he worked, to the heart of the village, and mysteriously this achievement increased their fear of him, enriching it with a bar of superstition. Calthorpe led him to a central chair, near the coroner, so that he stood in the middle of the room, with his hand on the back of the chair. He would not sit.
“This is very irregular,” said the coroner, “I know of no precedent for this, but of course there is no reason why Dene should not attend the rest of the inquest if he wishes. There will be no need for me 43to call him as a witness now; he attends as a spectator only. Dene, your affidavit was read earlier in the proceedings.”
“I want to speak,” said Silas.
“If there is anything you want to say, Dene....”
Silas stood erect at his full height, ignoring the chair to which he had been led; he had on his most truculent expression. Calthorpe was dismayed, but knew his own impotence. There was a natural force in Silas that was not to be thwarted. He made other men seem puny; only his brother Gregory matched him, and Gregory was not there.
“I’d like to hear the verdict returned first, if you’ve reached it,” said Silas.
The coroner shrugged his shoulders, annoyed and perplexed, then said,—
“Perhaps that would be as well. With the returning of the verdict the inquest is over, and anything you may like to say afterwards will be in the nature of a private address, not one held in a coroner’s court.”
He put the usual questions, and a verdict of “Death by Misadventure,” was returned, with a rider of sympathy to the widower “in the peculiarly sad circumstances of his bereavement.”
44“Death by Misadventure,” Silas repeated slowly; everybody listened in greedy anticipation; the accident and the inquest both provided succulent material for the curiosity of the vulgar, and to batten upon the exposed passions of a fellow-being—and that fellow-being a Dene!—was an excitement, a treat, albeit an alarming treat, full of surprise and of that quality of danger never very far removed from all manifestations of the Denes. The audience bent forward, with a slight rasping of chair-legs on the wooden floor; they gazed at Silas as though he were an animal at bay, devouring him all the more shamelessly that they knew he could neither see them nor read the unthinking hunger on their faces. He was the centre of mystery and alarm in the village, emerging from his darkness and seclusion only to terrorise. Celebrated as an orator at the village debating society, the men never knew whether to regard him as a leader, an enemy, or an ally. But here his heart, and not his theories, was concerned!
His first words startled them beyond their hopes of gratification,—
“Are you so sure?” He had intoned, but now, seeking effect with the skill of a natural speaker, he dropped his voice a full octave as he swung out 45into the current of his theme, “It seems to me a paltry sort of thing, to die by misadventure. A paltry ending, to be taken away willy-nilly, like a brat from a party! Why, a man might be leaving many things incompleted, many things he had set his heart on doing before he died. Death by misadventure! I wouldn’t set much store by the man that couldn’t look after his own life better than that, owning himself the sport when he ought to be the master. It’s a shameful thing to be beaten. It’s a shameful thing to give up your right of choice. Death by misadventure! a blunder, a clumsy mismanagement, a failure to carry through to the end, that’s all.”
His audience was amazed at the scorn he contrived to infuse into what was, to them, nothing but a trumped-up thesis. They could not admit that this unexpected, unnecessary, far-fetched thesis could be anything other than trumped-up. Even Silas Dene, full of surprising opinions as he was, could not, with the longest plumb-line, have discovered such an opinion as this anchored in the wells of his heart. He must be joking at their expense—deluding himself, perhaps, in his effort to delude them. A practical joker, Silas; even, it would appear, over his wife’s body!
46He had paused after his preamble, gathered all his thoughts up into his grip, and began to deal them out to his audience.
“Suicide, now—there’s nobility in that. That’s grand. That’s escape; true escape from a prison. The man who doesn’t care a damn for his own life is no prisoner. I call him the contemptuous man. He’s a conquerer; he’s free. How many of you have got that freedom? and how many have got snivelling, timorous little spirits that cling on to their miserable breath as a treasure? So long as you do that you’re bound slaves and prisoners. There’s no escape for you.
“You’re angry? I shouldn’t bait you and gibe at you? Every one of you is man enough to live up to my principles? Well, the floods are out; they’re handy; there’s nothing to prevent any one of you from proving his manhood and his independence. The floods over the fields, and there’s the Wash for anybody who’d like something a bit deeper.”
He launched this invitation at them with a trivial insolence. “He’s mad,” they said, and shrugged, crossing their arms in resignation, but they were troubled for all that; he was poking fun at them, a grim kind of fun, and their annoyance increased as 47they remembered his superiority over them: one couldn’t answer Silas Dene, he had read too many books, he returned fire with too many arguments and quotations. He stood there now, apparently ready to go on talking for ever, his only difficulty abiding in the variety of his topics, which to choose and which to discard. A little smile played across his lips as he paused, mentally turning over his wares, and surveying the audience which he could not see.
“That’s suicide. I see no reason why the man who, so to speak, has always got his finger on the trigger of his revolver and the muzzle of the revolver tapping between his teeth, should fear any pain or hazard. He has his way of escape always open. But there’s a braver man than that,” he said loudly, “the man who abstains from the death he doesn’t fear. Not from religion, not from thoughts of the hereafter; simply from contempt of the easy path. Too proud to avail himself of the remedy he has at hand. All of you who have troubles,” he said, pointing his finger at them and letting it range from side to side, sweeping across their rows as they sat, “wouldn’t you like to shake off those troubles by the easy way? never to suffer any more? to leave the responsibility to others?”
48They could scarcely believe that a few minutes previously he had been inviting them to cast themselves into the floods.
“I should roar with derision at the man who killed himself to escape his pain,” he went on, as though possessed by a demon of mockery, a cold demon that enjoyed goading their bewilderment. Mr. Medhurst frankly thought him diabolic; Calthorpe wondered whether he was in his right mind. “I have the right to speak of it,” he exclaimed, suddenly angry; “I spend my life in darkness; let any one dare to say that I have got no right to speak of pain! I don’t complain or ask for pity; I don’t want pity, I’ll fight against pity so long as I have breath, your pity insults me. But I can speak, because I know death as well as any man who has once stood on the gallows with the rope round his neck and been reprieved at the last moment. I’ve leant across the border like one leans across a ditch, and touched fingers with death, and then drawn back my hand. You can’t say as much. But shall I tell you something?” he added sombrely. “I mistrust myself, whether I have that true freedom; am I truly the contemptuous man? I wonder! but I wonder without very much confidence.”
49They were impressed, and as he ceased speaking they remained very still; the men thought “Poor devil!” and the women shivered. Calthorpe saw that Nan was straining forward in her place, her breath coming quickly, and her eyes full of tears. As she caught his glance she murmured, “Oh, can no one get him away?” but Calthorpe shook his head, for Silas had already begun to speak again.
III
 
“That’s for suicide, and that’s against suicide, and the more you think about it the more you’ll be obliged to think about it. Then there’s another thing to think about and talk about: murder.”
This time his audience was really startled; Nan gave a cry, and Calthorpe saw that she had grown pale, and that deep lines had appeared at either corner of her mouth. He made a movement to go and sit beside her, but at the same time Linnet Morgan shifted into a chair just behind her, and whispered to her over her shoulder, so Calthorpe remained where he was. Mr. Medhurst got up and pointedly left the building. The coroner coughed and said, “Really, Dene, you know....”
“I thought you told me, sir,” said Silas in his 50most insolent manner, “that this would cease to be a coroner’s court after the verdict had been returned?” The coroner made no answer to this, but began turning over his papers in order to conceal his annoyance, and after waiting a minute Silas continued, “Murder.... No one will deny that there’s as much courage in murder as in suicide. Oh, not in the actual fact, I grant—many of you would say there’s no courage, but only a sort of brutal cowardice, in murdering a man unawares, or worse still in murdering a woman,—no courage needed to push a woman under a train!—no, there’s no courage in the actual fact, but what about the forethought of it? the first idea, the scheming and the planning, the daily watching of the chosen victim, hey? you must come to a grand pitch of hatred before you can look at warm living limbs and think ‘I’ll turn you to the cold of death!’ Life’s great; I’ve a great respect for life. Life’s rich and warm and manifold, and lies outside the bestowal of man. That’s why I’ve so high a regard for life: there’s wealth in it, that we can’t bestow the same as we can take away. That’s why I say there’s courage in murder just as there is in suicide,—courage in assuming that liability.
51“And consider the afterwards,—the courage in keeping silent afterwards. The man would be living with a secret that took him by the arm as he walked down the street, whispering in his ear, and that snatched bits off his fork at meal-time as he lifted the fork to his mouth,—a playful familiar secret. It’d jolt his elbow at the first sign of forgetfulness. It’d come out with him on Sundays, jaunty.... He’d know that by a word he could turn his invisible mate into a visible thing for every man to see. The deed wouldn’t be finished with the moment the deed was done. Oh no! Crime would be easy enough to the man who had no memory. But memory has long wiry fingers to prod us under the ribs....
“Soberly,” he continued changing his voice, “let us think: it would be simple for any one to murder my wife. They could do it in my presence; I’m blind; I should be none the wiser. Let us suppose that, after she left me at the shops that day, some one had seized on her and dragged her away towards the level crossing; she could have held out her arms towards me for rescue, but I should have known nothing—nothing! That’s all perfectly plausible. But who should have had a sufficient grudge against my wife? I’m going through the names....”
52A real protest was about to be raised against this hideous entertainment, when a commotion arose:—Nan Dene had fainted.
IV
 
“Not surprising!” said the woman in commiseration, peering at her where she lay on the floor, “pore little soul!” “Better get her home,” said the men, and meanwhile the representative of the directors’ board took Silas firmly away from the hall. “Where’s Gregory?” asked some one; “At the factory,” some one else replied, and Calthorpe, pushing through the throng, said “Here, let me carry her.” “Mr. Morgan’s got her, sir,” said a voice, and Calthorpe saw Morgan rising from his knees with Nan drooping limply in his arms.
Great indignation was expressed against Silas as the factoryhands came in little groups out into the street. In the wan January sunlight Nan was already being hurried away in Morgan’s careful clasp towards her own cottage, followed by two women. Silas was on the opposite side of the street, his back against a house, in an attitude of defiance, talking to the director, who looked restrainedly indignant. Silas called out suddenly, pointing with his finger across 53the street, “Oh, I can hear you whispering! why not say it out loud: Silas Dene ought to be suppressed? but I’ve been a good friend to you in strikes and troubles, and it’s always been, ‘Get Silas Dene to speak for us.’...”
“Hush, hush, Dene!” said the director; “you’re not quite yourself; walk up and down with me for a little.” He took Silas by the arm and forced him to walk up and down, talking to him all the time in an earnest and persuasive undertone. The men and women lingered in their groups about the concert-room door, whispering together and watching Silas, but Calthorpe came amongst them and ordered them away. He was peremptory and irritable as they had rarely seen him.