I  
It was not long before she returned, and saw Silas alone, with the wreckage created by Gregory’s rage still around him.
“Silas!” she exclaimed, going up to him, “where’s Gregory?—where’s Linnet?”
“You ask for them in the same breath?” he replied.
“But I must know!” she said, catching hold of his arm and peering urgently into his face. “Silas, what dreadful excitement is making you so quiet, so strung-up like? Don’t think that I can’t see it. You’re gathered all into yourself, like as though you were waiting, and your face looks so strange. Silas! you are in a trance? For pity’s sake, speak to me. If you won’t speak, I must go. I can’t stop here. I’m going out—to look for them both. Only, if you can tell me aught, won’t you do so, Silas? you could if you would, I’m sure, and I’m so broken by terror, Silas, if you can help me now you’ll surely not refuse?”
255“The sinner must expect to pay,” he said slowly, his eyes wide open and glazed into impassivity.
“But I haven’t sinned, God be my judge!” she cried, wringing her hands together. “Silas, I do conjure you, as you hope for mercy yourself, let your lips speak; tell me—for you know—where they’ve gone, and why? Tell me where I can find them. Oh, if I were there, I could come between them, and if Gregory must injure me, why, then, he must, but I should know, I should know; it’s this doubt, this knowing that they’re together, this not knowing what they may be saying! it kills me, Silas. Silas, see here, listen to me, Silas: I’ve not been bad to you, have I, Silas? We’ve not been bad to you, Linnet and I? Well, have a little mercy on us now: we’ve loved, yes, but we’ve done no more wrong than that. I wouldn’t, with Gregory away. We were to tell Gregory everything, so soon as he came back. You know that, Silas.—Oh, you’ll not help me: I see it by your face. What are you thinking of? I never saw you look so terrible. But I haven’t time to beseech you more; I must go, and take my chance of finding them, and may your wicked heart be afraid for whatever goes amiss.”
256“You’ll not go,” he said suddenly, holding her down.
She struggled against him.
“Silas, you hurt my wrist; let go, I say. Oh, I see it: you’re in with Gregory, you’ve tricked us; my God, what can Linnet and I do against you and Gregory?—You laugh at that, you fiend,” she said, quietening into despair; “you laugh,” she said, rocking her head piteously from side to side, “you laugh, you laugh!”
“Gregory’s honest,” he pronounced; “I’ve got three of you, not two, in the net. Gregory’s my dupe too; he’s an honest man.”
“But, then, why? in God’s name, why? what is it, Silas? are you mad or sane? Are we to be your toys? What have we done to you? What had Hannah done?”
“Hannah?...”
“You killed Hannah.”
He still held her down on a chair, and by the high standard of their present stress the retrospective admission that he had killed Hannah seemed to them both subordinate. He was breathing heavily.
“Hannah laughed at me and fooled me; she was rough with me, and sweet-tongued enough with 257other men. I wasn’t going to be fooled by Hannah. She’d thrown in her lot with mine, and if I suffered she should suffer too. That’s why I killed Hannah. The world’s been made black for me; I’ll make it black for others.”
“It’s awful, your revengefulness.... But I tried to make it less black, Silas, so did Linnet; look, I don’t ask you now to help me, or to tell me anything, but only to let me go,—won’t you, Silas? It’s so easy for you to keep me here; I can’t escape from your strength if you’re determined to hold me. But I beg you; I beseech you. Often you tried me high, and if I failed you I ask your forgiveness. Only let me go now. Don’t help me; I don’t ask that; only give me the chance of helping myself. I ask with all the patience and humbleness in me; I’m in bitter anguish, Silas. Gregory’s hard enough, Heaven knows, but he’s got the heart of a woman next to you.”
“Gregory’s less bereft than I; I only have my own mind to feed upon.”
“Surely that’s true of us all, blind or not blind?” she said, in a weak attempt at argument.
“Then I was born with a darkened mind, not only with darkened eyes,” he exclaimed violently, and 258with renewed determination. “I’m cursed with the one as much as with the other, and though God knows no justice I’ll throw in my quota to balance the scales: I never deserved the curse I got, but, since I got it, I’ll deserve it; and I’ll see to it that others get something they don’t deserve, as I did myself. Did you ever consider what blindness meant? To be dependent on others’ charity, to be a burden, a maimed thing? above all to have to submit to pity, when you were born with a spirit that wanted the envy of other men?”
“Silas, Silas, all that’s just words, and meantime you’re draining the life out of me.”
“You’re not Nan,” he said, “not Nancy Dene; you’re just the victim of my curse. What does it matter that you never knew Lady Malleson? Blind, you call me? why, I think we’re all blind—blind instruments, not more blind one than the other.”
“Gregory only breaks my things,” she cried out, kicking with her toe at a fragment of china, “but you’re putting all my happiness in pieces.”
“Yes,” said Silas, “I told you he was an honest man.”
“That’s why we would have put everything to him honestly,” she began with extreme earnestness; 259“we would have told him we hadn’t sought one another out, but that something led us.... We had talked it all over, what we would say. Silas, will nothing soften you? You talk about courage: we meant to be brave, not deceitful; you even urged us, once, after the fire, to hold to one another if we loved truly. You said we were the builders; you talked beautiful. I never knew a man talk like you talk, sometimes, Silas. You seem all lifted-up.... Maybe you wouldn’t see so bright if you didn’t see so black. I had a feeling for you; oh yes, I had! Though all the while I knew about Hannah, and after Hannah, Martin. But I didn’t know then that after Hannah and Martin it would be me and Linnet—and Linnet! You seemed kindly to us, of late. Was it all a trap? did you never feel kindly while you spoke us fair? Oh, Silas, everything’s going from me. It’ll go badly between Linnet and Gregory. If I was there, I’d manage; you fight things as they come along; and Linnet, he needs me to look after him. He’ll be stiff and buttoned-up with Gregory, but that’s not the worst: it’s Gregory I’m afraid of. Not speaking, he puts everything into his fists; you know what he’s like, Silas. And Linnet’s my life,—my life. I’m telling you more 260than I ever told him, save once. Won’t you let me go?” She moved her wrist tentatively within the clench of his fingers.
“I waste, I fail,” said Silas, holding her wrist more closely than before; “the day you came from Sussex to Abbot’s Etchery you were meant to fall in with me. I told you already, you’re not Nan Dene; you’re a thing. You’re part of my design. You, and your little loves, and dreams and what-not—I’ll grind you. When I was a boy, I set out to give people as bad a time as I had myself. My mother hated my father and was afraid of him; he used to jeer at her when he saw how much she hated Gregory and me. Because we were deformed, you understand. Once I was given a rabbit for a pet; well, I put out its eyes with a needle. That makes you shiver: I hold that it was only just. Now I’ve got you; you’ll be better game than Hannah, because that was over too quickly; but you, once Linnet is taken away from you, and you’re brought back where you belong, to my brother, to be my brother’s wife, his faithful, broken, submissive wife—I’ll know that every day your prettiness will wither, you’ll never sing, you’ll never put out china for Gregory to break, you’ll shun young men because you’ll have 261known the pain of love, you’ll bury your heart below a mound, and your hopes beside your heart, and so you’ll grow old between Gregory and me, and we’ll speak less and less, until you and I sit as silent as Gregory himself.”
He paused, but she gave only a small moan.
“You were right,” he went on, “Linnet is with Gregory now. I sent Linnet off, and now I’ve sent Gregory to join him. You won’t see him again,—not if I know Gregory. Gregory won’t tell us what took place between them,—not he! He’ll come home presently, and you’ll get our supper, and have yours between us, and after supper Gregory’ll get out his drawings. And every evening afterwards will be the same,—exactly the same. Maybe you’ll have children and watch them growing like me; you don’t know, yet, what seeds might be lying in your children’s minds. I’d watch over them, never fear; I’ll not have my nephews grow into milksops, into sentimental dabs....”
He spoke with such virulence that Nan cried out, unbearably slashed. That seemed to gratify him, for he settled down into an intermittent growl:—
“Your children.—Your sons.—But Denes, all the same.—Who stands alone?” he muttered, taken up 262on that revived train of thought, “Who stands single? no one, it seems; your sons wouldn’t be solely yours. Where’s independence? not in this world. O folly! to let it slide, even in part, into another’s keeping. Where would be your trouble now, if Linnet hadn’t your heart? Freedom goes when the heart goes.—Not strong enough.—Loneliness and labour,—yes, surely.”
“’Tisn’t all that, ’tis happiness you grudge,” said Nan, suddenly bitter.
“That’s your little view: there spoke Nan Dene!—And if you thought that, anyway why did you flaunt your happiness in my face? Eh?”
“Oh, Silas, you kept asking me....”
“And if I did! Was it part of your kindness that you boast of, to give me the glimpse of a feast I couldn’t share? Was it meant as a treat? You’d be willing to give me kindness; I couldn’t expect more,—a blind man like me. Very lucky to get as much.” He roared suddenly with laughter. “That’s a pallid sort of thing to offer,—I won’t give you thanks for that,” he cried.
Nan thought that he was really going mad; madness and disaster had broken crashing over her world. The forces loosed were too great and too bewildering 263for her to strive against; the sanity of Linnet, the sanity of their joy, was lost for ever, lost, foundered in the madness of the hurricane brought about by Silas and Gregory. For Gregory there might be some excuse; Silas appeared to be possessed by a senseless, impersonal fury of destruction. She thought she might as well argue with the unleashed elements as with Silas in his bitterness and diabolical delight. Yet life still moved, still endeavoured; and, pricked by its promptings, she struggled,—
“You hurt me and Linnet because we are safe to hurt; we can’t hurt you back.”
“It’s not true!” he yelled.
She was utterly astonished at the effect she had produced.
“But, Silas,” she said, inspired, “we all know you for a coward. We all know your talk for bluster. Did you think we didn’t know that, by now?”
II
 
She had not at first spoken tauntingly. She thought she had meant only to pronounce the truth. Then she perceived that the truth had cut deeper than any taunt. She was as a naked, unarmed person 264driven up against a wall, that finds suddenly a blade put into their hands. She held it, but was perplexed how best to use it. She made a thrust,—
“All your talk is talk. It costs you nothing to ruin Linnet and me. It cost you nothing to throw out Martin.—And Hannah,” she whispered, “and Hannah!—What have you ever done that hurt yourself?”
From the tremor of the hand still clutching her wrist she discovered that he was shuddering.
“You dare speak to me so?” he threatened.
“Hit me,—I can’t hit back,” she replied, upheld.
But he made no movement to injure her. His defeat was as complete as it was sudden. Against his determination, which no appeal could have moved, no bribe impressed, she had turned the sole effective weapon, his own intrinsic weakness. There was no repair possible to a breach that had start............