Part 2

“Look here,” Silas cried, “the Lord’ll hear your prayers just as well if they’re put up from your parsonage. This is my cottage, and my affairs are my affairs; what I do, or what’s sent to me, and how I take it, is my affair. I’ve always held that a man was a thing by himself, specially when he’s in trouble; he isn’t forced to be the toy of sympathy, and of help he doesn’t want. Let me alone. I don’t want your prayers, Mr. Medhurst. I don’t want your holiday, Mr. Calthorpe. I’ll be at my work to-morrow morning same as I always am—same as I was to-day after my wife died, though, mark you, I didn’t know it. I don’t whine, so I don’t want you to do my whining for me. No. I never missed a day at my work yet, and though I’m blind I work to keep myself, and I’ll look after myself, and my rights, blind as I am,—I’ll not be deceived, not I. ‘Poor blind Silas.’ Don’t let me hear you say that. Perhaps I know more than you think, and guess the rest.” He went off into a string of mumblings, and a slight foam of saliva appeared at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s no good staying here, Mr. Medhurst,” said Calthorpe, trying to get the clergyman away.

“You speak to him, Calthorpe.”

“I’ll try.—Here, Silas, you don’t hate me?” said Calthorpe, going up to the blind man.

“No; you’re a well-meaning, ordinary sort of chap,” replied Silas.

“Yes, I don’t want to be anything else. Now see here, if you think work will keep your mind off things, you must come to work; but if you want to stop away, you can stop away for a week. Is that clear?”

“I’ll come to work. A man’s got a right to decide for himself, hasn’t he?”

“Of course he has; but don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t get mulish. You don’t look right somehow. You’re all out of gear; small wonder just now, but you know as well as I do that you’re a bit ill-balanced at the best of times. Take it easy, Silas.”

“You mean well, I dare say.”

“Yes, I swear I do; don’t say it so grudgingly. See here: cling on to your political grievances, man; they’ll take your mind off your own troubles.”

“I know how to bear my own troubles.”

“I’m only giving you a hint; get angry over something. Go down and make one of your speeches to the debating society. I don’t share your views, and I disapprove of your methods, because they stir up trouble amongst the men, but I’d like to think that something was helping you.”

“Chatter!” said Silas suddenly.

“You’re too damned scornful,” said Calthorpe flushing. “All right then; fight it out with yourself. Snarl at your mates, and scare the women. Make yourself lonelier than you already are, you poor lonely devil.”

Silas laughed at that, and some of the hostility went out of his face.

“Thanks, Mr. Calthorpe. I’ll be at work to-morrow. Going now?”

“Mr. Medhurst and I are both going—unless you want us to stay?”

“No, I don’t want you to stay.”

“No ill-feeling, Silas?”

“None, if you mean because you mislaid a bit of your temper.”

III

Nan opened the door for Mr. Medhurst and Calthorpe, who passed out together and were immediately lost to sight in the fog. In the winter months, fog hung almost continuously over that low, fenny country; white fog; billowy, soaking mist. Little wraiths of it swirled into the kitchen as she opened the door, so she shut it again quickly,—she did everything quickly and neatly. For one moment of panic she wished she could have gone with Calthorpe, who was kindly, commonplace, and easy, instead of remaining alone with those two violent and difficult men, and the dead body of her sister-in-law upstairs. She was weary of the strain that never seemed to be relaxed in their cottage.

“Next time that canting parson comes here, I’ll lay hands upon him,” said Silas.

“Will I get supper now?” asked Nan, trying to distract him.

“What a packet of folk we had!” Silas broke out; “it was rat-tat at the door all the time, till the whole village had passed through, I should say.”

“Folks are kindly,” said Nan.

“Folks are curious,” barked Silas.

She sighed, but, knowing better than to remonstrate, resumed her question.

“Will you have supper now, Silas?” and she repeated the question on her fingers to Gregory. “We’ll eat with you, Silas, to-night. Gregory and I,—we’ll be there whenever you want us. I’ll do the house for you, and your cooking. We’ll all eat together, so long as you want us to.” She was gentle and bright.

“I don’t want your pity.”

She busied herself with getting the supper out of the oven, carrying the hot dishes carefully with a cloth. Gregory watched her, pivoting in his chair to follow her movements. Once he talked to her on his fingers: “Don’t you take no notice of Silas; he looks queer to-night,” and when she answered, “Small wonder,” a broad grin distorted his dark face. His bones and features, strongly carven, in conjunction with the muscularity of his body and the perpetual silence to which he was condemned, made him appear like a man cast in bronze. He was, moreover, singularly still; he would sit for hours without stirring, his arms folded across his chest; he never betrayed what he was thinking, but the others knew that it was always about machinery. Silas, on the other hand, was far more excitable; he was always occupied; his mind had many trains of thought which it pursued; Nan never knew which of the two brothers she found the more alarming, and life had become for her an uneasy effort to conciliate them both. She had hesitated before speaking of supper; meals seemed to accord badly with tragedy.

Silas talked unceasingly; he talked with his mouth full and many phrases were unintelligible. Now and then he mumbled, now and then raised his voice to a shout. He thundered assertions, and spat questions at Nan. Gregory sat crumbling bread and sneering at her distress. She was distressed because Silas was in one of his most uproarious moods, launching opinions on his diverse subjects, every one of which readily attained the proportions of an obsession in his mind; and she was distressed further because she had all the while the alienating sensation that her husband understood his brother better than she did, although he could hear no word. She sat between them, eating very little, while they ate voraciously. She was thinking of Hannah, who lay upstairs.

Once she asked a question. “Who’ll you get, Silas, to live with you now?”

“Linnet Morgan. He’s anxious to find handy lodgings.”

“Linnet Morgan. That’s the chap newly in charge of the scents? Would he live with just working-people like us?”

“What’s the difference?”

Nan could not define it. She had not intended a challenge, but Silas had a trick of treating everything as a challenge.

“He’s soft,” she said at last.

“He’ll learn not to be soft here.”

Towards the end of the supper, Silas fell into one of his silences that were little less alarming than his speech. He sat over the range, chewing his pipe. Nan, having cleared away the supper, made herself small with some sewing in a corner. Gregory, looming hugely about the low room, disposed his drawings on the table under the direct light of the hanging lamp. They were on oiled paper, pale blue, pale pink, and white; large sheets of exact drawings of exquisitely intricate machinery. He bent over them, handling pencils, rulers, small compasses, and other neat instruments of his craft with a certain and delicate touch. He had clamped the drawings to the table with drawing pins, holding down the curling corners, smoothing out the shine of the folds. He was lost at once in them, forgetting both his own observant mockery and the tragedy which had seized and shaken his relations in its rough grasp. He was lost in his silent world of smooth-sliding precision and perfection.

His drawing was his hobby, not his profession; he guarded it from the outside world as a secret, and in the factory perversely clung to the meanest and most strenuous physical labour. When his wife protested—with more politeness than indignation—his fingers ran in emphatic oaths. When his machines were ripe to be shown, he would lay them before the whole board of directors; yes, he would startle those gentlemen; but until then he would be a workman, wheeling the barrels of liquid soap to the vats, beating and stirring it in the vats when it needed cooling,—nothing more.

He worked under the light of the lamp, making here a dot of correction, there a measurement of infinitesimal exactitude. His great fingers touched as delicately as those of a painter of miniatures.

The kitchen clock ticked in the stillness.

IV

Nan rose presently, heaping her sewing into her large open basket. Her husband was still absorbed in his drawings, and Silas in his meditations, over which he muttered and scowled. He seemed to be conducting an argument with himself, for his lips moved, he nodded or shook his head, and tapped his fingers upon his knee. Nan hesitated before disturbing him. But she knew that she must warn him before she left the room, for he could communicate with Gregory only with difficulty. She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Eh? what’s that?” said Silas, starting; he had been very deeply lost in his thoughts.

“I’m going to our cottage for a bit, Silas, to put things straight there; I’ll be back presently.”

“Gregory’s here, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s got his drawings out on the table.”

Silas grunted, and Nan, after wrapping a muffler round her head and mouth, let herself out of the front door.

In her own kitchen, which was identical with Silas’s in the other half of the cottage, she stood breathing with a sense of relief. Ah! if she might remain there! But she might not; Silas, who fought all the time against her sympathy and her ministrations, Silas, in spite of that ungracious ferocity, was now dependent upon her and could not be forsaken. Responsibilities by a cruel irony thrust themselves upon her weakness. She, who had so much need of protection, must protect.

She must not idle here.

She began rapidly clearing away the disorder of the day, raking out the fire, and drawing the short curtains across the little windows. She took her husband’s boots into the scullery at the back of the kitchen, and set them ready to be cleaned the next morning. She went upstairs with a candle, turned down the bed, drew the curtains there too, and tidied the dressing-table. Through the partition in the next cottage was, she knew, a similar bedroom, and in that bedroom, where Silas and Hannah had slept every night for twenty-five years and where Hannah’s two children had been born, the remains of Hannah now lay, covered over with a sheet, and Hannah, brawny, loud-voiced, tyrannical towards her sister-in-law, bullied by Silas, at times sullen and at times nosily recalcitrant towards him, would no longer go about the house as a working-woman, her sleeves rolled up, an apron over her dress, clattering pails and mops, ordering stray children off her whitened doorstep. Nan had not loved Hannah, but she thought it horrible that Hannah should be lying through that thin partition, in the disfigurement of which the men had whispered.

She wished that she dared arrange to sleep in another room, but Gregory would be angry.

She finished her work as quickly as she could and returned to Silas’s cottage; only a couple of yards separated front-door from front-door, but, shivering, she pressed her muffler against her mouth to keep out the fog. The light and warmth were welcome again as she slipped into the kitchen.

Silas had not heard her. Gregory had his back to the door and did not see her. He was still bending over his drawings, all unaware that Silas stood near him, speaking, a wild and reckless look upon his face.

“You can’t hear me, Gregory, old man. Old brother Gregory, wrapped up in your drawings! How much do you know, hey? How much do you guess? _I_ did it—you know that, hey? She laughed at me—with Donnithorne. She played the dirty on me—with Donnithorne. I hated her, but I’ve got my honour to look after. I shan’t tell anybody, only you, old man. Tell you I did it—hey? Don’t tell anybody, Gregory!”

III

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.

“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, Mr. 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 faint 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 man. 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 for 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.

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; isolated 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 to 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.”

“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 into 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.”