V. Sackville-West

“ I’ll lend you my cottage,” said Silas, rising and groping for his cap. “Play at home for a bit. Draw the curtains, light the lamp, make tea for yourselves, put the kettle back to sing on the hob, and you, Nan, sing to your zither to your heart’s content. It’s a pleasant, warm room, for pleasant, warm people. Home of a Sunday, with the wind shut out! Oh yes, I’ll lend you my cottage. Gregory’s lost in his drawings till supper-time. Stay here and talk and smoke and sing, while the room grows warmer, and you forget the wind and the two dead horses and spoilt fodder lying down the road. ”

“ The abbey on the farther side lay heaped in a mass as dark as the mass of the factory. Nan would shift to the other hand the basket she was carrying home from the market-town of Spalding; walking along the elevation of the dyke, she made a tiny, upright figure in the great circle of the flat country, for here the disc of the horizon was as apparent as it is at sea. The group of village, factory, and church, emerged like an island loaded with strange and sombre piles of architecture, adrift from all other encampments of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By walking a little way in the opposite direction, and turning her back upon the village, she would dismiss the factory and look across the liberated country, as it was impossible to do in these days when the floods accompanied the factory for miles around as a reflection of its spirit. She told herself that she wanted nothing more. She knew that she could be happy,—perhaps not indefinitely, but she did not look far ahead, the present was too buoyant and suspended,—happy for the moment if Silas would but leave her alone. ”

“ Every time a siren hooted he hunched himself more closely together, as though the compression of his limbs would afford him some protection.
“I think the glare is dying down, Silas,” she said gently.
He hunched himself fretfully away.
He was thinking, “They are full of forbearance and long-suffering. Am I to be taught gratitude? perhaps through disaster? They would let God himself look into every corner of their minds. Little children!” For the moment, under the effect of his fear, he did not brand them as lacking in savour. Their limpidity seemed to him as desirable as the absence of danger. ”

“ II On the higher ground beyond the marshes the air was clear from fog. Here were knolls surmounted by clumps of beech-wood, the ground beneath the trees rusty with last year’s leaves, and the trunks of the beeches themselves bare, lofty, and processional, their clubbed heads shaven against the winter sky. From these knolls one looked down over the brown mirror of the floods, that surrounded the block of the village with the factory and the ancient abbey, and that were crossed until the eye lost it in distance by the great dyke carrying the road and the perspective of stark telegraph poles. ”

“ But he rounded on her with unwarrantable sharpness. “I think your ladyship is mistaken: I never remember saying I was fond of Morgan. They’re neither of them any more alive than a turtle-dove sunning itself in a wicker cage.”
“You strange creature—have you no natural affections?” she said, with indolent curiosity. “None for that young man, who really devotes himself to you? none for your little harmless sister-in-law?”
“I’m nothing to them—only a blind man to whom they’re kind out of their charity.”
“I don’t believe, Silas, that you are so bleak as you make out.” ”

“ 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....” ”

“ Linnet tried to speak to him; he was interrupted, reasonable words fluttered vainly amongst the vibrant emotions with which Silas’s soul was strung. Neither Linnet nor Nan could have any cognisance of such a diapason. “You shall not come near me,” Silas shouted; “how am I to know you wouldn’t give me up? although I killed Gregory for you; and I loved Gregory.—We’ve destroyed one another. It’s right,—people like us ought to go. There’s no place for us. I can’t save myself,” he said, “I’m blind; every one can take advantage of me. How could I live hidden for weeks in the country? ”

“ She uttered the most treacherous remark she had ever breathed about Silas, something which fringed the frightful truth, “I know better,” then terrified of her indiscretion, added, “Oh no, I mean nothing.”
“You are afraid of him, aren’t you?” he said, coming round the table closer to her, his attitude very sympathetic and protective, and differing by a shade from Calthorpe’s attitude. “You must not be that. One can only be sorry for Silas, who has grown warped and crooked, and who talks because there is nothing else he can do. Whenever I think of Silas, I feel so lucky in mind and body.” ”

“ You’re nothing but a sham and a coward.”
“It’s not true,” said Silas, growing very pale.
“It’s so true,” she said quickly, “that the words I’ve just used to you are the very words you have always most dreaded hearing. A sham and a coward. You’re such a coward that there have been moments when you were glad you were blind, because that saved you from dangers other men were expected to undertake. You were quite safe to talk about danger; your blindness sheltered you, and words couldn’t possibly hurt. ”

“ I The workers were subordinate to the factory; it was a giant, a monster, that they served. At night the red glow from the chimneys,—the glow from the fires that must never flag or die,—accentuated the disregard of man’s convenience. To keep alive that red breath of activity, men must forego their privilege of sleep.
The tragedy in the household of the Denes was not allowed to interrupt the general work of the factory, but the overseer, Mr. Calthorpe, offered Silas Dene a week, and Gregory Dene a day,—the day of the funeral,—as a concession to their mourning. ”

“ The households of the double-cottage were so interchangeable that it increased Nan’s sense of restriction within that grim and tiny circle, the monotony of knowing that after supper Gregory would bring out his roll of drawings and flatten them out on the table with drawing-pins, and that Silas would surround himself with his great Braille volumes, running his fingers over the pages while his eyes would remain fixed on some distant corner and expressions of amusement, interest, or indignation uncannily succeeded each other upon his face. ”

“ He moved his body uneasily about, and unintelligible mumblings like groans escaped him. He fought; he wrestled. He fixed that sightless gaze upon Nan, saying in tones of reluctant abnegation, “And am I to end so?” He cried out once, startling her by the anguish that tore his voice, “Failure! failure! beaten by a jeer! weakness beats me; poor blind Silas, poor weak Silas, couldn’t stick to his purpose even when his end was in sight!” ”

“ So he was blind, as blind as Silas himself; the more honourable because, despite his blindness, he still wrought undeterred.
How various were his pursuits, his methods of conquest! to maintain and advance himself in the supreme captaincy; so diverse the images of vigour which the labourer in his activity was too simple to suspect. There were men who wrested from the earth the last guarded secrets, pitting their limbs against forest, mountain, ice, or waterless plain; only their soft limbs against the giant sentries of unhandseled nature ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The black shape of the abbey on the edge of the desolate floods bulked like a natural growth rooted in old centuries, harmonious and consonant with nature. To the vision of Silas Dene, on which no human limitations were imposed, and 105whose mind was fed on sound and thought alone, the abbey was not less vast than night itself, only a night within the night, an abode of ordered sound within the gale of sound. ”

“ Inside the five-hundred foot length of gallery the vats stretched away in low regular ranks, under the even light of the flat windows, pale-brown with dirt. The soap in the vats shifted and breathed; spat and slithered as it boiled. Linnet lay unconscious on the ground, as though he had been dropped there by a man surprised at his work; cast down with no more care than a toy by some formidable strength; and forgetful of prudence, Nan was instantly on her knees beside him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Silas was kinder than ever she had known him, kinder and gentler, also he appeared to be more contented, but she had a terrified suspicion that he was contented only because his mind was occupied, and it seemed horrible to her that she should be the centre of that occupation. She had suddenly become involved in an affair whose existence, she protested to herself, had its being solely as the outcome of Silas’s imagination. ”

“ She had often to constrain herself from crying out. He walked boldly, really knowing the way without her guidance, and talking in a loud voice, swinging his arms, so that sometimes people stopped to stare at him. He rehearsed and repeated every detail of that day, making a grievance that he had not known of his wife’s death until three hours after its occurrence, and Nan shuddered, wondering how he could infuse so much vehemence into a lie. ”

“ He found Silas, the blind man, sitting in his kitchen, chewing an unlighted pipe. He appeared to be strangely indifferent. A little man named Hambley, Silas Dene’s only crony, sat in a dark corner, not speaking, but observing everything with bright furtive eyes, like the eyes of a weasel. He hugged himself in his corner; a sallow faced little man, with a red tip to his thin nose. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Ditches and dykes would remain as the scar and testimony of the floods, the dykes that like some 126Roman aqueduct stretched away into the flat and misty distances.
Yearly Nan lived through the winter in the hope of such a spring, and almost yearly it failed her. She was drawn towards spring with an instinct of unsatisfied youth. It appeared to her like a vista cut in the darkness of the life she led between Silas and Gregory. ”