Part 12

He was ready, but for his coat. He stood in his shirt sleeves looking at Nan and wondering whether he should wake her or slip away to the station with no farewell. Then he bent down and slid his arm beneath the pillow, lifting her bodily towards him. She woke with a cry, to find Gregory’s face near hers as he knelt on the floor. It was very fortunate that he could not hear the cry, which, at first merely startled, changed to horror as she recognised him. His sardonic smile and her widened eyes were terribly close; their two faces, by reason of their nearness, seemed large to one another. She pushed with both hands against his chest, struggling silently; only half awake, she had not the wisdom not to struggle; now, she knew only his distastefulness. He held her, hardened to a cold fury by her resistance. He could see all her muscles exerted in the effort to get rid of him; even the corners of her mouth were drawn tight, and her eyes were fixed on him in concentration. She could not plead with him, as she could have with another man; their strife must be soundless; she pushed, and twisted herself within his grasp, both quite in vain, then, relaxing, she lay quiet, with his arm still beneath her. She stared up at him. She knew, and was terrified by, the expression in his eyes. He drew his hand from beneath her and sketched a rapid phrase on his fingers, at the same time moving towards her. She answered vehemently in the same manner, her arms pitifully slight and delicate as the loose nightgown fell back from them, and the fingers racing in gesticulation. His whole face darkened as he read; she saw that an angry obstinacy was taking possession of him. She tried to escape from the opposite side of her bed, but he seized her again, holding her down, determined, revengeful, and unshaken by pity. She sought wildly in her mind for some means of release, finding none, when she heard Calthorpe’s voice calling for Gregory beneath the window.

II

She was saved, he had gone, flinging on his coat and snatching his carpet-bag, but for long she remained trembling and fearing his return. She shuddered at intervals as she remembered their struggle, conducted in that horrible silence; their antagonism had been so condensed; none of it could slip away in words. She could still feel where his fingers had gripped into her flesh. If Calthorpe had not come! Now, now, they were on the road to Spalding; she was alone in the house, she was to breakfast with Silas and Linnet. Her shudders of horror gave place to the sweet shivering she knew when she thought of Linnet, an etherealised desire, a trembling of her spirit more than of her body, a going out towards a young and fit companion, who by a refinement of perfection was also a lover. Gradually she ceased to think of Gregory, and lost herself in the other thought, lying propped up on her pillow with an unconscious smile of heavenly happiness in her eyes and upon her lips. She rose presently, and in the same dream started to dress, delighting in the touch of the cold water she splashed over her throat and arms. The puritanical neatness of each garment, and the fibre of her laundered linen, likewise satisfied her as she became clothed. She had noticed how, without any exaggeration of fancy, small physical experiences were intensified of late,—colours were brighter, the song of birds more ringing, her flesh more sensitive to the touch, and in looking at people she had observed how the pores of their skin were distinct, or the firm planting of eyelashes, and sweep of eyebrow,—all these things, that were foolishly unimportant, but that added a vividness to daily life. She was in every detail more keenly alive; her nostrils dilated to smell the air, and she touched the sill of the window, where the wood was faintly warm under the sun, with a sense of comradeship. She moved, too, with a difference; her tread became resilient; her foot was springy as it poised upon the ground. Her small head carried itself with a light elasticity in the air, and she was actually conscious of the soft mass of her hair that caressed the nape of her neck as she turned her head. She had a wish for woods and cornlands; to sit in the roots of a tree beside a brook, allowing the water to eddy between her staying fingers; to bathe her body in a lake or in the surf of the sea. So, in loving one man, one loved the whole company of earth? Love was illimitable indeed, if it conferred that privilege, a wider thing than mere absorption in a fellow-being that was a creature, after all, of limitations as narrow as any other.

III

They were alone, the three of them, the absence of Gregory so startlingly unprecedented that despite Silas’s presence she obtained a foretaste of complete and sudden solitude with Linnet. She was admitted, she, the starved, to a feast of dominion. She found herself translated into a world where she, most marvellously, was the object of reverence and solicitude, and under this warmth of spoiling her natural grace expanded even beyond the anticipation of his delight. Aware that those ten days were but a reprieve, she gave herself up to making the most of them,—in so far as was consistent with the narrow rulings of her conscience. Linnet, exasperated at times, but ruefully submissive always, acknowledged and obeyed her imperious orders. She was very happy in her control of him; all the happier, perhaps in the knowledge that she owed it solely to the consent of his chivalry, without which (O exquisite danger!) her security would, like glass, be shivered.

There was, unforgettably, Silas. Silas proclaiming himself a friend, but, nevertheless, remaining a spy, a jailer. Silas who seemed to come upon them with a queer noiselessness; who cried, “Well?” over their shoulders, and who then, suddenly swooping down upon them, swept with his hands to learn whether they were sitting close together, or apart. They were always apart. Angered, he would say, “Well?” again, this time with a forced benevolence in his voice; and sometimes he would amuse himself by walking along between them, hilarious, taking an arm of each. This method of surprising them, this sham benevolence, this reasonless hilarity, struck cold terror into Nan as something indefinably sinister. Once, too, when she met Silas tapping his way over the cobbles towards the letter-box, on the envelope which he carried in his hand she read the name and address of Gregory. (Silas had adapted with delight this method of communication. He rubbed his hands together when he thought of Gregory, in Birmingham, tearing the flap open and scanning the lines of those able, indefinite letters.) But at other times she was puzzled by the hungry interest with which he questioned her, and in which her ear did not detect the usual unalloyed malignity, but rather a wistfulness, a desire to be admitted to a lovely secret, a genuine craving for participation, however humble, however incomplete, and beggarly upon the fringe of riches. At such times an eagerness crept into his face, as he bent forward to question her, his hands hanging loosely interlaced between his knees, the strong cords of his throat standing out in sculptural masses of light and shadow; words came from him almost timidly, as though he feared to presume or to give offence, but must nevertheless urge his examination, irresistibly tempted and allured. Nan, who sat sewing, looked into his face with wonderment. Experience taught her mistrust, but instinct taught her a heart-searching pity. There was always that same feeling which she had for Silas, which she could not explain, and which nothing,—no dread, no premonition, no knowledge,—could permanently destroy. It reawakened always at the sound of his yearning voice. Once it led her to put her fingers on his forehead, “How much you’ve missed!”

He sprang away, detected at the very moment when forgetful absorption had suspended his defiance.

“I’ve had all I wanted. Make no mistake. You’re wasting your sloppy pity....”

IV

Gregory had been so suddenly and so completely withdrawn! She adapted herself without bewilderment to the new order. She became as a girl, betrothed to Linnet. Their relationship had all the innocence of a betrothal. Her past life might have been blotted out, the future so far distant (down a vista of ten days!) as to be, for all practical purposes, negligible. She could have drawn from this a proof that the violence of the years lived between Gregory and Silas had made upon her being only a mark such as might be soon effaced. She, the true Nan, had slipped away from violence, because violence was so unalterably alien to her. The lesson of violence was a lesson she might provisionally learn, but would never long remember. She went out now to meet the condition she had always wanted: the secure tenderness, the settlement, once and for all, in her choice; she was not one who would demand variety upon the face of existence. Variety! she had had it; excitement, uncertainty, passion, and the weight of failure all around her, reckless because resigned; she had had all that, compressed within the limits of an iron circle; those were not the things she wanted. The things she wanted were the things that Linnet could give her.

The subtle sarcasms of Silas were incapable of troubling her quiet discernment.

XIV

I

Their last afternoon, a Saturday. They believed that Gregory was to return at seven; only Silas knew that he was to return at five. With the hoarding instinct that this knowledge might be useful to him, he kept it a secret. They were very silent, and remained close to one another, holding hands. How grave they were! They were very self-contained, husbanding all their strength. He knew that they meant to beard Gregory that evening, but he, Silas, equally, meant to outwit them, and he thought with satisfaction that his cunning was greater than theirs. He considered their silence with an irony more tragic than any of them knew. The pain that their company had cost him during the last ten days; the pain, too, which his own desire for their happiness had cost him; his angry, resentful love for them both; the strain of remaining true to his principles, and his vindictiveness (Christine! Christine! always Christine, recurrent, gnawing,) all this mingled in his mind to a state of folly with which he was almost unable prudently to deal. He acknowledged that he had been partly to blame. He had drawn out Nan’s confidences. But his temperament inclined him harshly towards self-flagellation....

“Only a little time now, Nan, before he’s here,” he said. “You’ll have much to tell him, much that’ll interest him. Remember, if you want any help, I’m here: Silas is here. Him being my brother, we understand one another, like you and Linnet understand one another. Blood brothers is close like lovers. Close as lovers.—But what call have I to talk of love, seeing I never knew it, nor wanted it?”

He went outside and sat on the doorstep, leaning his back against the closed door. The village street was deserted, distant voices sounded from the green; in the faint warmth of the April sun the paint of the door smelt hot, and flies buzzed stickily in the corners of the woodwork. Silas sat there clasping his knees, and swaying slightly to the ironical rhythm of his own thoughts. He felt like a jailer, keeping those two imprisoned inside; they were happy, in spite of the imminent crisis; merely and childishly happy because they were together,—that sufficed; he had learnt during those ten days the perfection of their happiness. Nan had betrayed, under his questionings, more than she had probably intended to betray, and under the pain of defrauded envy he had accumulated a store of knowledge. They seemed to _be_ one another; it was not so much sympathy that they enjoyed, as identity. Silas swayed himself slowly backwards and forwards; he put the tip of his tongue between his teeth and held it there; he tapped his boots softly together because of his enjoyment. They were inside, talking; Gregory would be home soon. It tickled Silas’s fancy to think he had a surprise up his sleeve in store for them; he, the unwanted third! he, the ostracised of the village! they would soon learn, all of them, that he still had fangs. He strained his ears to catch the first sound of the train, which, after stopping at Spalding, crossed the fenny country at some little distance. He wished for the dulled rumble indicative that the train was upon its journey and therefore that Gregory and Calthorpe were upon their way to Abbot’s Etchery along the dyke, but at the same time he wished this hour prolonged, an hour so entirely after his own heart. He had so many revenges to take, so many old debts to wipe off, that no luxury of procrastination could be too great. Provided only, indeed, that the completion was sufficient, and sufficiently inevitable; and as to this he had no misgivings.

He never heard the train. He continued to hear only the distant shouts from the green, the small noises of insects, and the murmur within the room—not a continued murmur, only an intermittent one—and the first sound that drew him from his torpor of satisfaction was that of footsteps on the cobbles and Calthorpe’s voice, in its somewhat irritatingly cheery tones, “Friend Silas! well, I’ve brought back Gregory safe and sound, and how are you all at home?”

Gregory stood planted in the middle of the street watching his brother’s face for his greeting of Calthorpe. His throat heaved, and his suppressed violence, which was entirely apparent, made his stiff black travelling suit and bowler hat seem puerile and ridiculous. He was in one of those primitive moods when civilised trappings become laughable: an angry man in a bowler hat.... Not only angry, but convulsed with anxiety, and with a rage that prayed only to be released. Yes, even though that rage must destroy his soul, it craved for an outlet. A man so minded would not have thanked the reassuring speech that drove back the straining rage as unwarrantable. The bag he carried was as paper in his hand. His limbs seemed to burst out of his clothes; strong muscle impatient for nakedness. His throat reared itself out of his collar. His hands protruded starkly from his cuffs. Civilisation upon him was as preposterous as the naked man wrestling beneath was superb. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, in the attitude of one who awaits and encourages an attack.

Silas was petulant at being taken by surprise; “I didn’t expect you,” he said, as though he had been cheated of his due. “Well, now that we’re here, let us come in,” said Calthorpe, still good-humoured, but slightly uneasy; he would have liked the numbers increased, not fancying the part of sole interpreter between the brothers; was he to act as light to the one, and as sound to the other? The constant companionship of Gregory, and, above all, the railway journey that day, and the walk along the dyke, had convinced him that all was very far from well amongst the Denes. “No,” said Silas, standing up and stretching his arms crucifix-wise across the door, “you can’t go in there.”

Gregory saw the gesture, which was intelligible enough, although he did not hear the words. A perverse relief swept over him, at having his worst dread confirmed. A horrible inarticulate noise broke from him, which made Calthorpe swing round in his direction. “Good God,” said Calthorpe appalled, “it’s like a baboon,” and he continued to stare, expecting the noise to be repeated. Silas, too, had heard; “Yes—like a brute,” he said, becoming transfigured with delight as he saw the certainty of manœuvring that brute with the cunning of his own intellect. Gregory never uttered a sound unless he was extraordinarily moved. “Tell him, Mr. Calthorpe,” said Silas, “that he can’t go into my cottage.”

“He wants to know why,” said Calthorpe, having delivered this message and received the answer from Gregory’s quivering fingers. “He looks as though he might spring upon you at any moment, Silas.” He watched, anxiously, first one and then the other.

“Gathering himself together, is he?”

“Yes—he doesn’t look as though he’d hold himself in much longer. Oh, you wouldn’t chuckle if you could see him.”

“Tell him to trust me and not to be a fool.”

“He says, was it true?”

“Tell him first, that he must let me manage things.”

“I don’t like the look of this, Silas; I’m all in the dark.”

“Never mind, sir; you just tell him to trust me.”

“He’ll be at your throat if I don’t,” and the communication passed silently from Calthorpe to Gregory. “He says he will trust you a bit longer, but he wants to see things for himself.”

Silas appeared to be perplexed by his brother’s impatience, and by the danger of Calthorpe putting two and two together.

“Ask him if he will wait till to-morrow,” he said, at length.

This suggestion so enraged Gregory that he leapt at his brother and was only warded off by Calthorpe’s appeasing gesture. He fell back a pace, and framed a message with shaking hands.

“He says,” said Calthorpe, “that he will be damned if he waits another five minutes. And I am damned myself, Silas,” added the honest instrument, “if I understand a word of this, or if I will go on letting you make a cat’s-paw of me for your black tricks. Call Mrs. Dene, who perhaps knows what you are up to.”

Silas was outwardly calm, but alert. He must lose no time in breaking up the trio.

“I shall explain everything to you, Mr. Calthorpe,” he said earnestly, still standing with his arms flung wide across the door, “but he’s a dangerous man, my brother. He’s in a dangerous temper. To tell you the truth, Mr. Calthorpe,” he ran on with extreme glibness, “he suspects some one of tampering with his designs—but keep that for yourself. I’ve got the proofs inside my cottage, only I didn’t expect you so early. We must get him away. Tell him to go into his own place and change his clothes, and I’ll send his wife to him.”

“Well, there seems to be no harm in that,” said Calthorpe dubiously.

“Believe me, sir, I’m acting for the best.”

“H’m—you seem mighty eager to get your brother out of the way.”

“Surely you only have to look at him, Mr. Calthorpe.”

Calthorpe looked, and, having done so, he asked Gregory to go. “But I am damned if I understand,” he said again, taking off his hat and scratching his head. “You Denes are hard fellows to make out,” he added in an access of irritation, seeing the expression on Silas’s face, and indeed he felt that his irritation was only small and petulant beside the anger of Gregory and the sardonic malevolence of Silas. If it were not for Nan, he would wash his hands of the whole lot of them. His easy-going philosophy of life was too greatly disturbed by the stress and inexplicable ferment of the Denes. He saw Gregory scowling in his indecision, than a message came from the able fingers, which he passed on to Silas. “He says he will wait for his wife in his own cottage.”

“Tell him she shall join him there,” said Silas grimly.

II

Devastation met Nan’s eyes when she hurried into her cottage. The white lace curtains were torn from the windows and the pictures lay scattered about the floor. Any ornament or attempt at decoration had been snatched from its place and flung across the room. In the midst of this wreckage stood Gregory, in his shirt sleeves, his chest heaving and his bronze forehead shining with sweat. He held out to Nan a paper upon which he had written, “_Plain deel tables and chairs is good enough for us, without fal-lals._” She read it, and with tears running over her cheeks knelt down to gather up her broken china, collecting the pieces tenderly into the shreds of the curtains. Gregory came towards her and kicked the things away from her hand. She knelt upon the floor, gazing up at him without protest but with inexpressible sorrow. Every time she renewed her gesture of gathering up the shares, he scattered them again by a kick, until in discouragement she desisted, waiting for his next manifestation. She dared not get up while he stood over her in his threatening attitude.

Silas came in; Nan found herself turning to him as towards a friend. Here, at least, was one who had some influence over Gregory! She felt herself the alien before the brothers.

Silas was sympathetic. Silas commiserated. Let her go away for a little, and he would soothe Gregory. Gregory had behaved like a peevish child. He, Silas, would remonstrate. He even patted Nan’s shoulder kindly as she passed him, drying her eyes, to leave the brothers together as she was bid.

XV

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?”

“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.”

“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 other 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.”